COMEDY DRAMA

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 223, 14 May 1932, Page 2

COMEDY DRAMA

EDNA MAY OLIVER IN "FANNY FOLEY HERSELF." COMING TO GRAND. Comedy that riscs from the highest sources and cmoGo -s ti it reach the heart-strings sound the note of RKO Radio Pictures' comedy-drama, "Fanny Foley Herself," coming to the Grand Theatre on Thursday, May 19. The production marks the stardom debut of Edna May Oliver whose performances in "Cimarron" and "Laugh and Get Rich" and other RKO Radio Pictures' successes made her a star by public demand. Miss Oliver is "Fanny Foley Herself,'' and the tale is as intriguing as Miss Oliver. ,She is a vaudeville star, and as the story ope.ns, she is notified of the death of her husband, who, with her two daughters, was returning home from a pleasure jaunt in Europe. He was the son of a multi-million-aire, and had been disinherited by his crabbled old father who believed the family disgraced by the marriage. Fanny bears her grief in the knowledge and belief that she will find i ^ . . i .• / ^

some measure of happiness in the society of her daughters. The story reaches its highest pathos when the girls, seeing their mother in action on the stage for the first time, • are ashamed of her. Her sacrifices f or them, their education in exclusive school have made them snobs. They are mortified, completely forgetting that her comic artistry was responsible for th.eir education. With. breaking heart, Fanny is forced to take curtain call after curtain call. This high point is merely the beginning*. All that is, by suberb direction and clever characterisations told in the first reel. The real action revolves from this point, when the old millionaire set out to save the family name by attempting to lure the girls from Fanny, and to buy her from the stage.