ST. JAMES

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 956, 26 April 1930, Page 17

ST. JAMES

‘NOAH’S ARK” A story of the Great War and a story from Biblical history are combined in "Noah’s Ark,” which is now in its second week at the St. James Theatre. The beginning of the modern story is set in a train travelling from Constantinpol© to Paris in 1914, with, a cosmopolitan group of travellers. Mary, an Alsatian girl, seeks to avoid the attentions of a Russian, and is protected by two Americans. When the train is wrecked the Americans rescue Mary. Later, when America enters the war, the Americans enlist. The Russian, who has become a colonel, causes Mary to be arrested as a spy, and she- is taken before a firing squad. At the moment she is to be shot Travis, one of the Americans, rushes to her side, and as a great shell lands in the courtyard the scene changes to the analagous Biblical theme of Miriam being sacrificed before King Nephthalim. Dolores Costello has the leading role as Mary and Miriam in the two stories, while George O’Brien is cast as Travis and as Japheth. The remainder of the programme at the St. James includes musical selections by the Revellers’ Quartet, an operatic solo by the great tenor Martinelli, and "A Question of Today,” a short and amusing sketch. It was only a little more than a year ago that Helen Kane, the “boop-boopa-doop” singer of the audible screen, was one of New York’s hundreds of revue girls. Today she is one of the film’s greatest attractions.