STATE THEATRE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 31 July 1940, Page 2

STATE THEATRE

A DOUBLE PROGRAMME. A splendid double programme will be shown tonight at the State Theatre. The first feature is “The Man Who Wouldn’t Talk." This 20th CenturyFox film is an unusual, powerful drama that holds one spellbound from the moment the strange central character comes on the screen until the final dramatic denouement. “The Man Who Wouldn’t Talk” is entertainment of the kind that makes you forget you’re in a theatre, so absorbed are you in the story being unfolded before your eyes. It is told in such an unusual way that one is in a constant state of excitement and suspense. Lloyd Nolan plays the title role, a mysterious character with no past, no friends, no relatives, who chooses to call himself “Joe Monday.” Featured with him in the cast are Jean Rogers, Richard Clarke, Onslow Stevens and Eric Blore. The first surprise occurs at the opening of a murder trial early in the story. The mysterious Joe Monday strides up to the bench and confesses his own guilt to save the innocent man on trial. But there Monday's informative streak stops. He will not say a single word further in explanation of his crime or in revelation of his motive or his own identity. This then is the mystery and it is' handled in a deft and interesting manner. It is an entirely new angle in mystery pictures and a welcome one. "Free, Blonde and 21” is the other feature and this absorbing 20th Cen-tury-Fox drama is brimful of love, laughter and excitement. At the hotel reside such beauties as Lynn Bari. Mary Beth Hughes. Katharine Aldridge, Helen Ericson and many more. With such girls around things are bound to happen. Joan Davis adds her very special brand of comedy as the hotel maid and Chick Chandler is her taxi-driver boy friend. Cast as a capable young beauty who knows how to take care of herself in the big city. Lynn. Bari falls in love with a doctor, played by Henry Wilcoxon. The ambitious young doctor has not enough spare time or money to suit this blonde so she picks up a dubious young chap, played by Alan Baxter, and suddenly finds herself mixed up in a holdup and a murder.