“THE HOME TOWNERS”

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 768, 14 September 1929, Page 16

“THE HOME TOWNERS”

PLAZA’S FINE COMEDY NEW TALKIE PROGRAMME * Crooks play's have enjoy'ed many' triumphs, but none of the same order as the triumph in “The Home Towners." There is noj; even the shadow of a crook in all the chuckling, genial course of this de luxe talkie version of one of George M. Cohan’s most spectacular success. It was presented at the Plaza Theatre yesterday. The home towners are just people, the sort we know. The main characters are two men, now middle-aged, who have been chums from boyhood days. P. H. Bancroft has preferred to marry and settle down in the old home town. Vic Arnold has gone to the Big Town and become a millionaire, and is now, at a rather late date, engaged to a beautiful girl, Beth Calhoun, whose father has invented the bottle washer, and with it some semblance of a fortune. His son. Wally, has a good job in Wall Street, and there is no immediate need of augmenting the family income. Yet, Bancroft, on being invited to be best man at the wedding, suddenly conceives the idea that his old pal is being hoodwinked, and goes, post haste, to set things right. Far from succeeding, he sets things violently wrong, and is at his wits’ end to set' them right again. The play' is in George M. Cohan’s wittiest and most genial vein, and the play'ers have made the characters actually' live. Mr. McWade, as Bancroft, is absurdly' ingratiating, in his well-meant meddling. He created the same part in the stage version. Richard Bennett is convincing as the supposedly ill-guided bachelspr, and Boris Kenyon exquisite as his misunderstood and spirited fiancee. Gladys Brockwell plays the wife of the outback visitor. Each part

is portrayed with fine understanding. The photography is unusually beautiful, and Bry'an Foj', in his direction has left no clue to character unused. In short, “The Home Towners” is a play in a thousand. It has the peculiar life and tang which makes George M. Cohan’s songs and play's absolutely Cohanesque, creations that can never be mistaken as coming from the pen of somebody else. The audience chuckled over “The Home Towners,” and will re-tell it, and want all their friends to see it. The short talkies were equally entertaining, They included vaudeville items by Ray' Kisman, the well-known boy' artist, jazz hand, an unusually interesting bird act by' Hyland’s Birds, and songs by' the gramophone artists, the Happiness Boys. A. E. Bupont is busy on the sensational British International version of Ernest Raymond’s play “The Berg.” The film, called “Atlantic,” is based on the greatest shipwreck in history —that of the Titanic in 1912. Bupont has just completed some interesting sequences shot in the London Bocks, where every facility was placed at his disposal by the Port of London Authority and shipowners.