REGENT THEATRE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 83, Issue 47, 25 February 1939, Page 11

REGENT THEATRE

"I AM THE LAW” AND "SHE HAD TO EAT” In his latest film, “I Am the Law,” screening to-day at the Regent Theatre, Edward G. Robinson is featured as a rather quiet aind lovable professor of law at an American academy. The story opens just as he is saying good-bye to his pupils before leaving on a year’s tour abroad with his wife, a role convincingly played by Barbara O'Neil. But just before his departure some idea of the terror instilled in the hearts of the shopkeepers of the town by racketeers is forcibly brought home to him. Instead of departing on holiday he is installed as Public Prosecutor. He is eventually successful in cleaning up the town. After the hilarious spree which stole many laughs for him in

"Wake Up And Live,” the Walter Winchell-Ben Bernie musical comedy hit, happy-go-lucky Jack Haley outdoes himself in a riotous performance in Twentieth Century-Fox’s comic bombshell, "She Had to Eat.” which is the associate feature. Guffawed to fame in supporting roles in one laugh hit after another. Jack plays the featured role in "She Had to Eat.” heading a cast which includes Rochelle Hudson, Arthur Treacher and Eugene Pallette. In addition to the two latter comedians, three others—Douglas Fowley, John Qualen and Tom Kennedy—make the story a mad field day of wit and humour. Jack's cherub face is seen this time adorning the proprietor of a roadside gas station, who, unknown to himself, is a miraculous skeet shooter. He is also sole manufacturer of an exceedingly powerful beverage known as "cactus cider” and when this is administered to Arthur Treacher and Eugene Pallette, things begin to occur. Jack is shanghaied aboard millionaire Pallette’s private train and then abandoned in the big city, where Rochelle Hudson takes the poor bewildered country boy in tow. Rochelle is a big-city-wise girl who knows all the angles, including hotel rackets whereby food, rides in limousines, literary teas, country club parties and other luxuries may be obtained at no

cost. A mad scramble of police and gangsters threatens for a while to gum up the works of both Jack and the picture, but everything but the funnybone is calmed down nt the finish.