MAURICEVILLE TALKIES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 22 December 1939, Page 7

MAURICEVILLE TALKIES

TOMORROW NIGHT. Will Hay mismanages a minor railway station in an uproarious farce entitled "Oh Mr Porter," which will be shown at Mauriceville tomorrow night. Even the railway engine is funny. A first-rate laughter show. Mr Hay plays a nitwit railway employee who cannot be sacked because he has relatives in high places. Sent out o harm’s way to an almost forgotten Irish station, he begins a terrific re-organisation with the assistance of fat youth .(Graham Moffatt) and a doddering old man (Moore Marriott). An excursion train —the first even promoted in those parts —gets lost, and the stationmaster goes in seatch of it, with his two “assistants,” aboard a decrepit engine, named “Gladstone" (an astonishing apparatus with a comic personality on its own account). In the midst of an heroic encounter with crooks. "Gladstone" runs away —I hen bursts! Mr Hay plays his funniest screen part as lhe dunderhead station-master—a close spiritual relation of his famous bungling schoolmaster. Scarcely less amusing are Messrs Moffatt and Marriott. Of course, it's all purely nonsensical farce in a traditional music hall vein, but it should delight everyone who is susceptible to hearty British humour. Excellent supports such as a Mickey Mouse colour cartoon, Terrytoon teartoon), News and a Gaumont Mirror make up a real family holiday programme.