Posted: Sun., Dec. 31, 1933, 11:00pm PT

Anne of Green Gables

By Variety Staff

RKO. Director George Nicholls Jr; Producer Kenneth Macgowan; Writer Sam Mintz; Camera Lucien Andriot Editor Arthur Schmidt; Music Max Steiner (dir.) Art Van Nest Polglase, Al Herman

Anne Shirley Tom Brown O.P. Heggie Helen Westley Sara Haden Murray Kinnell

Anne of Green Gables is wholesome, sympathetic, romantic and dramatic, packing many a heart-tug and tear-jerk. It will do much to establish Anne Shirley, who has taken her professional nom-de-screen from her character in the L.M. Montgomery classic. It parallels the professional billing stunt done when Tom Brown (Tom Brown of Culver) was given his marquee handle [two years earlier].

Orphan Annie's influence on Green Gables is relieved by an adolescent garrulousness that is most natural and captivating. Her conversion of the dour sister (Helen Westley) is a fine screen portrait, while the already basically sympathetic brother (O.P. Heggie) mellows into another excellent celluloid characterization.

Tom Brown's adolescent beau likewise develops into a manly and matured swain as Anne outgrows her her pigtails and into young womanhood.

Homespun setting is almost idyllic in a natural, bucolic Prince Edward Island (Canada) locale which cinematographer Lucien Andriot has deftly caught in a sequence of fetching landscapes, soft shadows and the like.

(B&W) Extract of a review from 1934. Running time: 80 MIN.