STATE THEATRE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 November 1939, Page 2

STATE THEATRE

TWO GRAND FEATURES. In preparation for more than a year, Darryl F. Zanuck’s production of' “Young Mr Lincoln” is a story that has never been told before. With simplicity, wit and power, the story carries young Abe through approximately seven years of his youth, the years of his courtship of his first sweetheart, Ann Rutledge: his choice of law as a career, his meeting with Mary Todd; his thrilling “moonlight murder” case. The dramatic highlight of this production is this famous murder trial—two boys charged with murder and between them and the gallows the attorney for Ihe defence, young Abe Lincoln! The original story and screen play of the film, which will be shown tonight at the State Theatre, was written by Lamar Trotti. Henry Fonda plays the important title role, with Alice Brady, Marjorie Weaver and Arleen Whelan co-featured. Lincoln’s yarns and witticisms are woven into the story which faithfully and excitingly recreates his romantic, thrilling and eventful youth. Every available historical document was obtained and studied before the story was placed in actual production. While the world is somewhat gingerly seated upon the Mediterranean powder keg, Preston Foster and Wally Vernon, two newsreel photographers in the 20th Century-Fox drama, also screening on the State’s excellent programme tonight, chase a girl. These camera daredevils roar in where brave men fear to tread, matching wits with spies and lips with sirens, in the thrill-pack-ed “Chasing Danger.” Foster and Lynn Bari are featured in the cast including Vernon. Henry Wilcoxon, Joan Woodbury and Harold Huber. A pair of harum-scarum Americans, ready for romance or riots, Foster and Vernon find plenty of both when they trail the lovely Lynn Bari to Morocco and set off international dynamite in a I North African revolt staged right in front of their newsreel cameras.