STRAND

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 857, 28 December 1929, Page 15

STRAND

SECOND WEEK OF “BLACKMAIL”

Keen interest continues to be shown in the big English-made talkie “Blackmail,” now in its second successful week at the Strand Theatre.

The story deals with the career of a young woman who makes friends with an artist in a West End cafe. He persuades her to visit his studio, but in the course of a subsequent quarrel the girl stabs the artist, fatallly wounding him. One of the detectives who are investigating the crime finds her glove in the studio, but hides it. Unhappily, the other glove has been found by a nondescript criminal, who tries to blackmail the pair. In the end, the blackmailer is himself suspected by the police of the murder, and in flying from them he is killed by falling through the glass dome of the British Museum.

The investigation is “closed” by the Yard, and the detective and the girl walk out with their deadly secret. The London players who appear in the leading roles are Anny Ondra as the girl, Donald Calthrop as the blackmailer; also John Longden and Cyril Ritchard in important roles. Among the bright supporting items is a Fox Movietone .News, a U.F.A. gem, a song selection, “Me and the Boys,” also a beautiful sketch, “In an Old World Garden.”