MARY PICKFORD TALKS

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 774, 21 September 1929, Page 18

MARY PICKFORD TALKS

“COQUETTE” COMING SHORTLY Three big photoplay events rolled into one are scheduled for a most important film entertainment in this city, and anticipation * of picturegoers i-s at fever heat. Never has the theatre-going public seemed so eager to see and to hear and to appraise the ultra-modern achievement promised by the world’s most favourite, motion picture star in her newest film. Mary Pickford, so long a silent heroine on the screen, has her premiere

in the all-dialogue “Coquette” which will be presented at the Strand Theatre shortly. In this production “The World's Sweetheart” offers a triply radical advance in her art. She speaks her lines. She plays a witching contem-

porary flapper role with alluring, bobbed hair. She plays an up-to- j date stage drama in which a great social ordeal vies with the traditional j Pickford sweetness and light, and in which significant heart-wrenching realism tests the very soul of the Pickford genius. With her adaptation of the stage success. “Coquette,” Mary Pickford signalises the first entry of an ace film celebrity into the new field of the all-spoken celluloid entertainment. Equipped for this pioneering by talent already demonstrated in a long career of “silent screen” triumphs, and by her early experience on the spoken stage, the star is said to bring with her the gift of the perfect voice for theatre amplification. This is announced as the verdict of all critics favoured with a formal preview and pre-audition of the picture. It is a final endowment of nature's riches with which this brilliant woman has been favoured in her remarkable career. And from a broader viewpoint her venture is seen as a great turning point in the history of motion pictures, which are due to enter a tremendous upheaval if the unqualified success* of Mary Pickford in “Coquette’ is confirmed.