GRAND THEATRE

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 596, 29 July 1933, Page 2

GRAND THEATRE

TO-NIGHT. R "70,000 Witnesses," a Paramount murder mystery set on a football field, opens at the Grand Theatre to-night, with Philips Holmes, Dorothy Jordan, Charlie Ruggles and Johnny Mack Brown in the Ieading roles. The story deals with th'e murder of Brown, a flash half-back, as he dashes through a clear field for a certain try. The spectators at the game, 70,000 of them, suddenly see him stumble, fall, and'remain prone on the ground. Baffled physicians who rush him to the hospital, find themselves helpless as he dies. They are unable to discover what caused the death, though authorities know it is murder. Ultimately, Holmes, Brown's teammate and friend, in eo-operation with a clever detective, discovers just how and yh' Brown was put out of the way. David Landau plays the role of the detective. Charlie Ruggles is seen as a good-natured and generally drunk reporter. The second feature is "The Vanishing Frontier," a story of the Old West, starring Johnny Mack Brown, with Eavlyn Knapp, Zasu Pitts, Raymond Hatton and J. Farrell MacDonald. Brown is cast as a sort of Robin Hood of the period immediately following Old Califorsia's ceding to the United States by Mexico. A military government rules with cold harshness, and th'e state groans under its spurred heel, praying for the day when civil

rule will replaee it. Brown, meanwhile, robs the ldch to aid the poor, and in blithe defiance of the army, gets what he wants. - But when he falls in love with Miss Knapp, daughter of a general, when her brother discovers the fact and is shot to death mysteriously wh'ilst out "gunjiing" for Brown and when she betrays her lover to the army, thinking him responsible for her brother's death, a dramatic and thrilling climax ensues. The story is developed from actual incidents in Californian history.