PLAZA

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 797, 18 October 1929, Page 17

PLAZA

“THE RAINBOW MAN” A film with lilting memories, as well as drama, and introducing the popular Broadway singer, Eddie Dowling, is "The Rainbow Man,” the Plaza's new attraction this evening. The story of "The Rainbow Man commences when Hayes, an a.crobat, is injured when he falls during an act in a vaudeville show. His friend, Rainbow Ryan (Eddie Dowling) adopts Hayes’s little boy, Frankie Darro. Dowling and the boy later get jobs in Sam Hardy’s minstrel show. The troupe puts up at an hotel in a little Southern town, where the proprietor, I,loyd Ingraham, warns the actors that they must be on their good behaviour.

Dowling meets the proprietor’s daughter, Marian Nixon, and immediately falls in love with her. She seems appreciative, and develops a fondness for little Frankie, baking him a birthday cake, which she brings to Dowling’s and Frankie’s room. It is while they are innocently celebrating round the festive cake that Ingraham descends upon the scene, becomes enraged at the "affair," and complains to Hary, who, believing that Dowling has misbehaved, fires him from the show. Some months later Dowling and the boy are in New York, broke and looking for work. Marian pays them a surprise visit. She tells them she has learned that Frankie’s dead mother was her own sister. She shows them an insurance check. Dowling renews his pledge of love. Marian tells him that she will marry him. But Ingraham, who has followed his daughter to New York, has a scene with Dowling. He tells the jobless actor that he wants him to forget the girl and the child, his grandson, and to permit him to take them back to the home town. Dowling, realising his own poverty, agrees, with ‘a breaking heart, to comply with the old man’s wishes. He returns to the boardinghouse, tells Marian that he does not really love her, and goes away, griefstricken.

A year later he is playing again with the Hardy troupe, in a little town near the one where Marian lives. In the middle of a song he spies Marian in the audience. He breaks his song, .walks out on the runway and again pleads his love before 'the embarrassed girl. The audience thinks it is part of the show. Dowling pleads so earnestly that the girl is induced to walk up on the stage. The two embrace and kiss as the curtains fall. . Hardy then appears and tells the audience that it was no pretending which they had just witnessed, but the real thing—genuine love. In the course of the film three new melodies are introduced in "Sleepy Valley,” "Smile, Little Dal,” and "The Rainbow Man." The new programme will also include the following shorter talkie items—novelty numbers by the famous jazz band, “Waring's Pennsylvanians," a comedy burlesque, "Amateur Night," and songs by the wellknown artist, John Charles Thomas.

"Illusion," a all-dialogue picture recently completed at Hollywood, stars Charles (.Buddy) Rogers. He is supported by Nancy Carroll and June Collyer,