REGENT

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1075, 12 September 1930, Page 15

REGENT

“CAUGHT SHORT” The amusing side of the recent American stock market crash will be depicted in “Caught Short,” a Metro-(Joldwyn-Mayer all-talking comedy featuring Marie Dressier and Polly Moran, which will be shown today at the Regent Theatre. The story, suggested by Eddie Cantor’s book, was written by Willard Mack. The supporting cast includes Anita Page, Charles Morton, T. Roy Barnes, Gwen Lee, and many others. Information is that the demand for further co-starring pictures for Miss Dressier and Miss Moran came as a result of their success as a laugh-getting team in such past productions as “Bringing Up Father,” and others. In “Caught Short,” they will be seen as landladies with competing boarding houses across the street from each other, whose dabbling in the stock market results in their sudden ri ?e from comparative poverty to financial independence and then back again by way of the crash. Love interest is furnished by the romance between Morton and Miss Page as the respective son and daughter of the comedy pair. Exclusive of the hilarity furnished by the Misses Dressier and Moran in their nouveau-riche circumstances, “Caught Short” is said to be distinguished by expert characterisations on the part of Barnes, Prior and Dillon in the role of boarders. The settings of the picture are reported to be a relief from the excessively modernistic interiors seen in recent productions, the scenes of “Caught Short” being laid chiefly in the Washington Square “Village” district of New York City. The boarding house atmosphere Is further carried out in scenes laid in tenements, meat markets, old-clothes emporiums, pawn shops and similar localities of the class of humanity represented in the picture. It is only when the stock-dabbling landladies come “into their own” that the scene shifts from the lower class districts to a luxurious hotel in Atlantic City and more elegant quarters. Several new talkie featurettes will also be shown.