This Day in History: 1934-03-17

It was a big week at the Lafayette Theatre in Suffern;  The feature on Friday and Saturday was Will Rogers in David Harum.  Also featured were Louise Dressler and Stepin Fetchit.  Starting on Sunday the attraction was Queen Christine with Greta Garbo and John Gilbert.  Later in the week there was a double feature of Sleepers East, a murder mystery starring Wayne Gibson and Preston Foster and “Devil Tiger” a jungle epic.  The picture was supposed to be about a baby elephant but the director, Clyde Elliot, could not find one and had to settle fro a baby tiger.  Enigmatically it was listed only as having an “all-star cast”.  Other local theaters had such diverse fare as Baby Leroy in “Miss Fane’s Baby is Stolen” at the Warner in Ridgewood, William Powell and Bette Davis in “Fashion Follies of 1934” billed as combining “Mammoth spectacle and spicy romance”, and Spencer Tracy in two very different roles.  He appeared at the Ramsey Theatre as an ex-gangster and beer baron railroaded into prison in “The Mad Game” and as an itinerant sign painter out to marry a rich heiress but ending up falling for a simple country girl in “Face in the Sky” at the Strand in Suffern. Of course if you waited until later in the week you could see the classic “It Happened One Night” with Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable co-starring for the first time, again at the Strand.  (A picture of the Strand was recently added to Grecos’)

(Bristow)