NATIONAL AND LYRIC

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 43, 13 May 1927, Page 13

NATIONAL AND LYRIC

“THE WHITE BLACK SHEEP” A double-bill programme is the new offering at the National and Lyric Theatres this morning. For the first time last evening was screened “The White-Black Sheep,” featuring Richard Barthelmess, and “The Chorus Lady,” with Margaret Livingstone playing the lead. Both films found favour with audiences at afternoon and night sessions.

The theme in “The White-Black Sheep” is by no means new. Richard, on this occasion, is a particularly good young man who places honour above all else. When he finds his lady love replenishing her purse as the result of the lucky find of a wallet, he manfully shulders the blame, is forbidden by his military father ever to look him in the face again, and dashes off to Mesopotamia.

In the usual dive Richard meets the usual innocent girl who dances at the behest of a wicked uncle for the amusement of intriguing Arabs of a particularly swarthy hue. Richard, who continues his Joseph Andrews’ existence in the desert, resists her advances.

But Zelee, the fascinating little Greek, played by Patsy Ruth Miller with considerable conviction, was not the designing female that she seemed to be. Into the open desert she carried Richard, after he had accounted for more than one insulting Arab, and there she tended him until he was well. Their chaperon was an old blind beggar, facetiously referred to as “Santa Claus.”

The denouement, as in all good melodrama, comes in its appointed time. Richard, by reason of his knowledge of the Arab movements, is enabled to save his father, and the family honour, of which the colonel is so enamoured, is at last redeemed.

The picture is saved in some cf its most banal passages by the excellent characterisation of both Barthelmess and Miss Miller. Neither is it accompanied by many of the impossible representations of an English home which some often are part of such a production.

A distinctly racy flavour has “The Chorus Lady,” in which Margaret Livingstone is the lady in question. Action is centred in the racing track from start to finish. The theme has little to recommend it, but it is presented quite attractively. By hanging to the back of a dashing fireengine Margaret Livingstone more than earned her salary.

Of unusual interest, too. is the British Topical Gazette. Included are some “shoots” of the tour of the Duke and Duchess of York.