MAJESTIC

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 839, 6 December 1929, Page 15

MAJESTIC

“THE GHOST TALKS” As a night train pulls into a Philadelphia suburb, a young woman, visibly ill at ease, alights and takes a bus to an hotel. She is followed by a man and. woman in one taxi-cab alnd by two men in another. That is the opening of the delightful farce-comedy, “The Ghost Talks,” which will be shown at the Majestic Theatre this evening. At the hotel to which the five are proceeding the 16-year-old room clerk, Frankly n Green (Charles Eaton), is busy declaiming on his activities in crime detection, which he pursues as a sideline. The kind of detective he is may be inferred from the tin badge and diploma he holds as a graduate of the Correspondence School of Scientific Detection of Dubuque, lowa. John Keegan, the big, flat-footed house detective, and other fellow employees sneer at his theories. They do not worry Franklyn, who busies himself with microscope and other apparatus which he uses in his analyses of unwitting guests. Into this situation come Miriam Holt (Helen Twelvetrees), the frightened little maiden who has just come to town. And also seeking accommodations at the hotel a_re the two pairs of suspicious characters who had shadowed her from the station. They prove to be Heimie Heimrath (Earle Foxe) and Marie Haley (Carmel Myers), posing as post office inspectors, and Peter Accardi (Joe Brown) and Joe Talles, who also, obviously, have wicked intentions. On a flimsy pretext “Camera Eye” Green, as Franklyn is wont to call himself, goes to Miriam’s room, where he discovers that the girl is in difficulties. Her uncle had made one misstep—with several accomplices he had held up a mail truck, obtaining about a million dollars in bonds. Then ne had died, but not before he had entrusted the girl with a paper containing directions as to where the loot could be found. It had been hidden. Miriam discloses to Franklyn, in a house in the suburb which the latter at once recognises as reptitedly haunted. In addition to an excellent programme of short talking and singing featurettes, this evening's entertainment will be notable for the first appearance of Mr. Whiteford-Waugh’s Majestic Stage Band, of individual soloists, playing many new selections and old favourites.