“MARRIED LOVE”

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 139, 2 September 1927, Page 15

“MARRIED LOVE”

NATIONAL’S STORES FILM “Married Love,” an original story for the screen by Dr. Marie Stupes, whose works on contraception have made her known throughout the world, was given its Auckland premiere at the National Theatre last night. A packed audience viewed the film which preaches the doctrine formerly advocated by Dr. Stupes through the medium of her pen. The parable of the rose garden is explained to the heroine, played by Lilian Hall-Davis. In one garden its keeper permits the tree to run riot. The blooms, in consequence, suffer. There are too many of them. On an adjoining plot another gardener carefully prunes his busli. There are certainly lower roses, but they are of better quality. And in the most choice bloom of all appeared the face of a child. This simple parable describes the tenets of Dr. Marie Stopes’s teaching. Fewer and better blooms, rather than let nature run riot in the garden of life, producing flowers, which, in the main, can never attain ripe maturity, it is the same with children. Fewer and. healthier ones, rather than a quiverful of underfed, unhappy, and, unhealthy offspring. “Married Love” uells the story of Llie struggles of Mrs. Burrows, the coerced unresisting mother hurrying into an early grave in a vain attempt to bring up an ever-increasing family; tlie brutality of her degenerate loud-mouthed husband, are terrifying in their grim reality. The rebellion of her highspirited daughter, Maisie, against her destiny as an unwilling bearer of a brood of children destined to similar misery; her desertion of the parental roof, and her downward journey into the gay underworld, where she finds still greater slavery. . The primary duty of the cinema as the stage play, is to entertain, and in “Married Love,” will be found a quick succession of heart-quickening thrills and tense situations. Life is eventually viewed from an entirely new angle. The girl is content to return to her lover. Safe in the mysteries of “Married Love” she feels that she can face matrimony unafraid. The film is unmistakably British in The supporting

feature is “Headlines,” in which the leads are played by Alice Joyce, Virginia Lee Corbin, and Malcolm McGregor. There is also a Monte Banks’s comedy on the bill, and an interesting E m pi i' e News Bulletin, which shows the Royal Family at Ascot.

Having completed his ninth screen role of the year in Edward Sutherland’s Paramount picture, “Love’s Greatest Mistake,” William Powell, after spending a vacation in Kansas City, returned to Hollywood to play a featured part in Eddie Cantor’s second Paramount starring picture, “Special De- . livery.”-