STRAND

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 698, 25 June 1929, Page 15

STRAND

“THE*CANARY MURDER CASE” Odell, Margaret, 184 West 71st. Street. Sept. 10. Murder: Strangled about 11 p.m. Apartment ransacked. Jewellery stolen. Body found by Amy Gibson, maid. “Here, in a few commonplace words, is the bleak, unadorned statement of one of the most astonishing crimes in the police annals of New York—a crime so contradictory, so baffling, so ingenious, that, tor many days the best minds of the district attorney’s office were completely at a loss as to even a method of approach.” Margaret Odell, known as “Tho Canary,” Broadway’s most coldly ambitious showgirl gold-digger, is found strangled to death in her apartment. Philo Vance, whimsical society man, who has gained fame as an amateur detective, is brought in on the case. “Who murdered the Canary?” Was it Mannix, the fat broker who loved The Canary until she threatened to show his letters to his wife? Was it Spotswoode who feared for his son in the grasp of the scheming woman? Was it Lindquist, the half-insane doctor, mad with love of her? Was it Cleaver whose political career she menaced? “It’s none of them! ” says Heath the detective, ajid he arrests Alys La-Fosse j£ the Canary chorus and her sweetheart, Jimmy Spotswoode, son of Vance’s best friend. Alys lived next door to The Canary and Jimmy had quarreled with Alys and let himself into The Canary’s power It’s one of them!” says Heath, “and another man was locked in the closet and saw the murder. Find him and he’ll tell you who the murderer is!” The Strand programme is composed of talkies from start to finish, and the first all-British talkie to be seen and heard in New Zealand is among the supporting items. This is a comedy entitled “Smith Wakes Up.” There is also an impressive sound reproduction of the Armistice Day service at the London Cenotaph. Richard Arlen, Clive Brook, Fay Wray and William Powell have the leading. roles in “Four Feathers,” and the direction was done by Ernest Schoedsack and Merian Cooper, famous as the makers of the jungle film, “Chang,” released by Paramount last v ear.