Modern Screen (Jan-Dec 1960)

you some of the things that are happening outside, which this newspaper notes in passing: a three-year-old girl wanders into a sewer without her glasses; an ace pilot (relative of a lady editor) makes a test flight: it's raining. But inside I Inside. Jack Webb strolls from desk to desk, curbing his mounting turmoil. He has mounting turmoil because his wife (Whitney Blake) wants to adopt a child — and he doesn't want to. Inside, city editor William Conrad drinks forty cups of coffee, writhes in agony at the sight of David Xelson (he's a copyboy). reels off witticisms as though he were auditioning for the part of a city editor and Elia Kazan were hiding under his desk. Inside, heiress Nancy Valentine indulges in nasalized tirades trying to prove she can so be a girl reporter even though she went to Smith (the college, not the cough-drop company). Inside, all is drama of the sort that never gets into a newspaper— and never should. — Warxers. BELOVED INFIDEL a novelist and a lady Deborah Kerr Gregory Peck Eddie Albert Karin Booth John Sutton ■ Last year. Hollywood columnist Sheilah Graham wrote a book about her life. In it was the story of her romance with F. Scott Fitzgerald, one of the outstanding novelists of our time. The book was a natural tor a movie — and here it is. With Deborah Kerr as Sheilah and Gregory Peck as F. Scott Fitzgerald. It opens on an ocean liner with Deborah sailing for Xew York from London, her home. Lord John Sutton doesn't want her to go. He wants her to stay and marry him — even if his mother cuts him off without a cent. Deborah's too practical, too ambitious to accept this sort of proposal. Shortly after her arrival in the States she becomes a reporter, is sent to Hollywood where she attracts attention by sniping at movie stars, notably at the glamour girl of the hour — Karin Booth. Eddie Albert (as the late Robert Benchley) befriends Deborah and, at one of his parties, she meets Gregory Peck. Peck's once-beloved wife has been in a sanitarium for years, his reputation as a novelist is at a low ebb, he drinks too much. He and Deborah fall in love. Their romance is gay. tender, touching. During this period he begins, but never finishes, what critics later consider his most mature novel. But for him happiness comes too late to save him; for Deborah it comes in time to make a real woman of her. — 20th-Fox. LI'L ABNER Dogpatch. U.S-A. Peter Palmer Leslie Parrish Stubby Kaye Howard St. John Julie Newmar ■ Just imagine all those beautiful girls from Dogpatch in Technicolor. Imagine Sadie Hawkins" day when the girls chase the fellows and Appassionata (Stella Stevens) puts the 'whammy' on Li-1 Abner (Peter Palmer) thus clearing the field of Daisy Mae (Leslie Parrish). Daisy is loved by Earthquake McGoon (Bern Hoffman) — the world's 'champeen dirty wrassler' who is dirty enough to want to steal her away from Abner. But the folks have even bigger problems brought on by the government's decision to use Dogpatch as an atomic testing ground. Dogpatch, according to the government, is the '"most useless town in America." Useless ! When it can produce a tonic that turns apes into matinee idols? When, under the statue of Jubilation T. Cornpone, is found a tablet signed Abraham Lincoln ? Abner takes the town's fight to Washington and before he's through, Dogpatch be comes a national shrine. Lots of songs and lively dancing. — Vistayjsion. Paramount. THE WRECK OF THE MARY DEARE Gary Cooper Charlton Heston adventure at sea Michael Redgrave Emlyn Williams Virginia McKenna ■ There's a gale blowing in the English Channel when two ships don't pass each other in the night: they collide. Aboard the Sea Witch, a salvage boat, are Charlton Heston and Ben Wright. Aboard the Mary Deare is no one — or so it seems when Heston boards her. Only one lifeboat is left, a fire is raging and the ship is heading toward a rocky graveyard. Suddenly Heston is seized from behind by Gary Cooper, the captain himself, a man who looks and acts as if he's been having violent nightmares. The question is: how did the Mary Deare deteriorate into practically a ghost ship? The answer is: sabotage, mutiny — even murder. Cooper begins the story which ends in a London Court of Inquiry where he must defend himself against wild accusations. It's an adventure story in the salty old sense — full of blood, thunder and a heavy air of my sterv . — M GM . THE WONDERFUL COUNTRY Robert Mitchum Julie London north of the Rio Grande Gary Merrill Pedro Armendariz Albert Dekker ■ Robert Mitchum fled to Mexico as a boy — after killing a man who murdered his father. In Mexico he works for Pedro Armendariz who, with his brother, is rich and ambitious for power. This makes Mitchum a hired killer (Continued on page . and never so few were the moments left for love!