MAORILAND PICTURES.

Shannon News, 7 April 1926, Page 3

MAORILAND PICTURES.

“THE BRIDGE OF SIGHS.” A .Warner Bros, classic featuring Dorothy Mackaill and/entitled “The Bridge of Sighs,” will be screened at the Maoriland Pictures to-night. Four people—two fathers-, a son and a daughter—are the important features in a drama that plumbs the deepest pits of life and weaves a tense stOTy around the -reckless spirit of youth and the sacrificing love that suffers for others. ZANE GREY’S MASTERPIECE. “THE THUNDERING HERD.” ■ It would .take a long time (says Zane Grey) to tell all about how I came to write “The .Thundering Herd”—almost as long as it took to write the book. But perhaps, I can give you some idea in short space. In the first place, some fifteen years ago I had the great good fortune to become a friend of the old plainsman, Buffalo Jones, and he took me on some wild trips to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. He was really the saviour of the is to say, he captured most of the buffalo calv-es, from which have descended all the buffalo living to-day. Naturally, I was t pretty much scared by Jones’ cowboys, who put me on a white horse that the buffalo: hated, and the whole herd -took after me and chased me all over the desert. Not until aftrwards did the cowboys tell me that the white horse thought it was play, and could never have been caught by the buffalo-. From Buffalo Jones I first -heard about the millions' of buffalo -on the' plains in the early' days—-tiie vast thundering herds—and the stories of how they were massacred for their hides and bones. Hides sold >as cheap- as /twenty-five cents. This slaughter was one of 'the bloodiest carnages in the history of the world, and a terrible blunder. For the buffalo were superior to cattle, and would have enriched our great West. Biut they were butchered in a few short yeans. I determined to write the story of the vanishing of the thundering herds, and set about getting my material. A few years ago- 1 visited the plains of Kansas, Oklahoma and the Pan Handle of Texas, to make myself familiar with the prairie land where the vast herds used to Tio-arn. I found deep buffalo wallows and trails, -but no other signs of the American bison. Then from, all I had gathered I wrote “The Thundering Herd.”, I hope all my readers will be interested in the story, not only because I have tried to draw a true picture of the animals, but also that it may give you the impulse toward conservation of what wild life still exists in the United States.

At the Maoriland Theatre, on Friday night.