PHILIP BARRY PLAY

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 3, Issue 650, 30 September 1933, Page 2

PHILIP BARRY PLAY

"WOMAN IN H.IS HOUSE" . AT MAJESTIC ON MONDAY. POWERFUL STORY. Every once in a while a human be- , ing- reads a hook or sees a play that upsets his most cherished convictions, dynamites him out of his complacency and makes him look at life from a point of view he did not suspect existed. Such an experience awaits those who see the motion picture version of Philip Barry's play, "The Woman in his House." There is dynamite in almost every foot of film and every word uttered in this picture, which opens at the Majestic Theatre on Monday, October 2. It is Philip Barry screened at his best. What a subtly powerful drama he has written! What cruel truths stab from behind gay repartee! Leslie Howard, as Tom Collier, who w"ould rather print a beautiful hook than make a lot of money, and who

would rather select his friends from among- people he likes than the stuffed shirts of his father's social position, finds( his spiritual, cultural and | intellectual mate in the woman he lives with. Whereas he finds only a sensuous allure, albeit a most hypnotic and bewildering allure, in his : wife. Ann Harding plays the mistress and Myrna Loy the wife. Tom arrives at the unavoidable conclusioh that there is something more deeply, subtly sacred than a formal marriage tie. Cecilia, his wife, although well-hred, has the psychology of a kept woman. She is only interested in Tom's commercial future and her own comfort and security. She tries to hold him with her hody when she cannot cope mentally with him. Daisy, on the other hand, is mostly concerned with his spiritual peace and mental growth. She is spontaneously his "wife." On& might regard "The Woman in his House" as a battle of art against. commercial enterprise, with Ann Harding and Leslie Howard, ahetted by 'Leni Stengel and Donald DilloWay, ranged on the side of art, and Myrna Loy, Neil Hamilton, Ilka Ghase and

Henry Stephenson ranged solidly on the side of enterprise. The title is based on the belief that that human heings, in their love lives, are still living pretty much in the animal kingdom.