“FRISCO SALLY LEVY”

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 149, 14 September 1927, Page 15

“FRISCO SALLY LEVY”

MAJESTIC ON FRIDAY “The comedy of the future will be that wherein the audience laughs at the characters—not at the actors.” This is the prediction of William Beaudine, noted screen director, who directed “Frisco Sally Levy,” coming to the Majestic Theatre on Friday. The new picture is a romance of San Francisco, laid about the trials and tribulations of a Jewish-Irish family, with Sally O’Neil in the title role. “Comedy on the screen,” says Bea.udine, “has always heretofore been caricature. No one ever accepts caricature as a representation of the real thing, and as a parody on it. Therefore, human characters in the old type of comedy were impossible; unnatural grotesques filled their place. The audience laughed, not at the characters, but at the antics of the actors. “But characters we see in etmry-day life are often as funny as the grotesques on the screen, and it is at this type of characterisation we are aiming in our new picture. “For instance, Tenen Holtz plays the part of a Jewish tailor in “Frisco Sally Levy.” Instead of making this role a comic caricature, he is giving it a sincere characterisation, and the comedy in it comes from the very sincerity of his work. He plays a comical character, a character that itself has a sense of humour. Kate Price as his Irish wife has the same type of role. It is funny, because it is natural.” “Frisco Sally Levy” also includes Charles Delaney, Roy D’Arcy and others of note in its cast. May McAvoy's next picture for Warner Brothers is to be “Rebecca O’Brien.”