STRAND

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 524, 29 November 1928, Page 15

STRAND

NEW BUSTER KEATON COMEDY “Steamboat Bill, Junr.,” the Buster Keaton comedy for United Artists, which will have its local premiere at the Strand Theatre to-morrow, is probably tho most lavishly produced laugh feature ever made. From the first glimpse of the frozenfaced star, when he ambles on to the screen as a foolish youth whose own father doesn’t even give him credit for being able to do anything but play a ukulele, till the uproarious climax, when Buster turns into the most extraordinary character that ever trod the deck of a stern-wheeler, ‘‘Steamboat Bil, Junr.,” is said to keep audiences in hysterics. Advance notices call “Steamboat Bill, Junr.,” Keaton at his funniest. He is the awkward son of a river ship owner, whose position is being threatened by a rival shipper. The part of Buster’s father brings Ernest Torrence as the stumbling, shambling, laughable, but not unlovable old shipowner. out of step with modern business, but stoutly refusing to give up the ship. Buster’s plight throughout the picture is such stuff as laughs are made of. When, for instance, he smuggles into the crude gaol where his father is, a huge loaf of bread containing an entire gaolbreaking kit, the situation pits the Keaton comedy against the Torrence comedy, contrast making comedy more comical. Marion Byron, a slender, girlish little newcomer into the United Artists forces, plays the girl opposite Buster’s awkward youth. Tom McGuire and Tom Lewis are other prominent members of the cast who share laugh honours. “Steamboat Bill, Junr.,” was directed by Charles Reisner, former associate of Charles Chaplin and later the megaphone chief for Syd Chaplin during the filming of “The Better ’Ole.” “The Missing Link” and other comedies.

Josephine Dunn, ex-New York show girl, who has her first important screen role in “Excess Baggage,” William Haines’s starring vehicle, has been given a long-term contract by Metro -Goldwyr?-Mayer. Miss Dunn is now playing the leading feminine role opposite Haines in “A Man s Man.”