THRILLING ACTION

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 288, 30 July 1932, Page 7

THRILLING ACTION

"RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE" OPENS AT GRAND ON SATURDAY EPIC ACHIEVEMENT Perfect combination of romance and thrilling action comes together in "Riders Of The Purple Sage," which opens Saturday at the Majestic Theatre. Fox Films has made of this famous Zane Grey subject one of those infrequeht so-called "programme pictures" that emerges from the studios as a real epic achievement; a perfect harmony of cast, story, setting and direction that results in a picture to be talked about and remembered. George O'Brien, in the role of Lassiter; the heroic stranger, has the finest role of his career; Marguerite Churchill is beautiful and convincing as Jane Withersteen, owner of the historic rahch that Lassiter saves from the depredatioris of Noah Beery, who plays a villain you aehe to hiss, Stanley Fields and Frank McGlynn, Jr., and their organised henchmen. Others who do work that is more than creditable are James Todd, Yvonne Pelletier and little Shirley Nails, a real screen "find" of three years of age. The story is one of the best that ever galloped from the proliflc pen of Zane Grey. O'Brien, a lone rider of the chapparral, looking for a sister who has strayed away from home many years past, comes to the ranch of Marguerite Churchill, whose grazing lands and herds of cattle are coveted hy Noah Beery, venal judge and corrupt head of a Law and Order

Society. O'Brien pursues Beery's underlings, when they rustle Miss Churchill's cattle, to a secret valley whose entrance is through a water- [ fall, and comes on traces of his lost sister. When he learns she is dead he reeovers her two children and punishes Beery in a very exciting seqrtence. Then he escapes with Miss Churchill and baflles the pursuit of the Beery faction in a manner too I thrilling to. spoil by revealing.