MAJESTIC

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 875, 20 January 1930, Page 15

MAJESTIC

“BIG TIME” Familiar faces are seen in “Big Time,” the excellent Fox Movietone alltalking comedy drama of backstage and behind movie sets, which is now at the Majestic Theatre. Leo Tracy, Mae Clark and Josephine Dunn, who enact the leading roles, make their first screen appearance in this picture. They are supported by others whose names and faces are more familiar, Daphne Pollard, Stepin Fetchit and a number of others. Tracy, who was the stage star of “Broadway” for nearly three seasons and who played the lead in “The Front Page,” portrays the role of a small time and conceited vaudeville dancer, while Miss Clark© appears as his wife. They both repeat their stage successes in the picture. Tracy gives a most satisfactory interpretation of a difficult role, putting spirit and feeling into the character, thanks to Kenneth Hawks’s fine directorial sense. Miss Pollard and the inimitable Fetchit, dark laughmaker of tbe screen, furnish the comedy. They keep the audience in a roar of laughter. Miss Dunn portrays the role of “the other woman,” Gloria, who leads the vaudeville dancer a merry chase, away from his wife, then drops him when luck turns. The cast is good and the story is appealing. The climax arrives in a Hollywood motion picture studio and the setting for this sequence is little short of marvellous in its gorgeous and stupendous beauty. Excellent supporting talkie items and new music by Mr. Whiteford Waugh’s orchestra completes a fine entertainment. A terrific hand-to-hand fight between Richard Arlen and George Kotsonatos, professional strong man, forms one of the dramatic highlights in “Flesh of Eve,” Nancy Carroll’s first starring picture. “F.\esh of Eve” was adapted from Joseph Conrad’s famous story, “Victory.”