Motion Picture Herald (Jul-Aug 1946)

Illlllllllllllimillllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllimilllillllllllllim COMPLETED MONOGRAM Hot Money Trigger Finger RKO RADIO Honeymoon 20TH CENTURY -FOX Carnival in Costa Rica UNIVERSAL Rustler's Roundup The Killers (Hellinger) WARNERS Possessed (formerly "The Secret") Cloak and Dagger STARTED COLUMBIA Return of Monte Cristo (Small) Outlaw Tamer PARAMOUNT Big Haircut RKO RADIO Devil Thumbs a Ride SCREEN GUILD One More Chance (Affiliated Films) 20TH CENTURY -FOX Late George Apley UNITED ARTISTS Strange Bedfellows (Stone) UNIVERSAL Vigilantes Return SHOOTING COLUMBIA Gloved Hand Dead Reckoning Down to Earth Thrill of Brazil INDEPENDENT Here Comes Trouble (Roach) MGM Summer Holiday Secret Heart Sea of Grass Lady in the Lake High Barbaree Beginning of the End Uncle Andy Hardy Sacred and Profane MONOGRAM Wife Wanted Bringing Up Father PARAMOUNT Jungle Flight (PineThomas) Emperor Waltz RKO RADIO Riffraff Beat the Band Katie for Congress Best Years of Our Lives (Goldwyn) Secret Life of Walter Mitty (Goldwyn) It's a Wonderful Life (Liberty) REPUBLIC Sioux City Sue Home in Oklahoma That Brennan Girl Angel and the Outlaw 20TH CENTURYFOX 13 Rue Madeleine Razor's Edge UNITED ARTISTS Fool's Gold (Hopalong Cassidy) Comedy of Murders (Chaplin) The Chase (Nero) Dishonored Lady (Stromberg) Bel Ami (Loew Lewin) No Trespassing (Lesser) UNIVERSAL White Tie and Tails Pirates of Monterey Magnificent Doll ( Skirball-Manning) Swell Guy (Hellinger) Smash-Up (Wanger) Ramrod (Enterprise) WARNERS Cry Wolf Deception Life With Father Stallion Road THAT PSYCHO STORY SWING IS NO CYCLE; IT'S NOW AN OBSESSION by WILLIAM R. WEAVER Hollywood Editor One of the last things the resident representative of the late Office of War Information told Hollywood writers, always attentive to the voice of Government, and producers, always listening to writers, was that Washington felt it would be a good idea for the screen to prepare the population for the arrival home of a large number of veterans in the psycho-neurotic category by depicting, in terms of fiction, typical problems of readjustment, so that the public at large would know how to treat returnees whose views of life and living might appear to have undergone change since they left the old home town. Acting on that suggestion, several producers turned out upper-bracket pictures dealing directly with the subject of p-n; as he came to be known familiarly in writingcircles, and whether these pictures served the government purpose or not was never learned, officially, on account of that act of Congress which resulted in the abandoning of the OWI project before the returns were in and a verdict rendered. Once Started, Something Happens Everybody knows, however, that you can't just start a colony of writers off in a given direction and abandon it, even Congressionally, without having something of consequence happen, and the thing of consequence that happened in this instance was that, once having started delving into the realm of abnormal psychology, Hollywood's considerable colony of writers kept right on delving. Quite early in their delvings they sidetracked the ex-serviceman in whose interests they had undertaken the project, or began using him as an incidental character, and the upshot of this more or less natural expansion of endeavor is a succession of pictures about mental disorder which promises to demonate the entertainment menu from now on until the law of diminishing returns goes into effect. Flow Unabated With studio backlogs already stocked near to clogging with films in this general category, the news of more to come continues to flow unabated. Producer Albert J. Cohen, joining Eagle-Lion last week, announced "Mattewan" as his first picture. Anatole Litvak, who's to produce for Enterprise, has acquired Mary Jane Ward's book about life in an insane asylum, "The Snake Pit," and plans to produce it for that studio. William Pereira is preparing for production for RKO Radio the Anne Parrish book about a young woman with a Narcissus complex, "All Kneeling," which will be called "Christabel Caine" and will star Joan Fontaine. "The Innocent Mrs. Duff," an Elizabeth Holding novel which Richard Maibaum is to produce for Paramount, concerns paranoia and schizophrenia ; and Ben Hecht, whose current "The Specter and the Rose" presents the case of a demented ballet dancer, is whipping up a story about a mad musician for his next venture. So runs the news, by no means complete, of forthcoming explorations of the mind of man, the conscious and the subconscious, the fixations, neuroses, and the assorted derangements which used to be lumped off by script writers, and sometimes still are, under the general heading of insanity. In the backlogs, only lightly skimmed for these observations, are the following: "The Cat-Man of Paris," Republic, in which amnesia occupies the foreground while homicidal mania lurks beyond; "The Crime Doctor's Manhunt," Colum bia, concerning a psychiatrist who treats a veteran afflicted with amnesia and traces the veteran's murder to his insane fiancee ; "The Dark Mirror," International, regarding a psychiatrist who proves that a girl schizoid is innocent of a murder ; "The Ghost Steps Out," Universal, in which even Abbott and Costello find themselves cast in company with a psychiatrist and some earthbound ghosts, for purposes of humor only ; "Humoresque," Warners, concerning in part a dipsomaniac who commits suicide; "The Locket," RKO Radio, which has to do with a kleptomaniac who finally loses her sanity entirely; "The Man I Love," Warner, dealing with a psycho-neurotic veteran and three girls; "Possessed," Warners, in which a woman, denied the man of her choice, marries for money and winds up in an asylum, a victim of involutional melancholia ; "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty," Goldwyn, having to do with a frustrate, addicted to fantasies, who overcomes his difficulty by a. deed of daring; "So Dark the Night," Columbia, wherein a criminal tries to beat the rap by feigning schizophrenia ; "The Unknown," Columbia, a melodrama in which a woman goes crazy but ultimtely recovers her sanity. Not Exactly as Ordered So runs the tenor of the pictures to come from the backlogs, perhaps not exactly in accordance with the OWI suggestion mentioned above, but assuredly as an indirect consequence of it, for until then the ladies and gentlemen who write the scripts had not bothered to explore the lore of psychiatry beyond such relatively simple matters as demented doctors determined to perpetuate life, transplant human brains into apes, and things like that. Wither and how far the trend will carry Hollywood knoweth and saith not yet, but it's not to be written off under the convenient label of "cycle." It's an obsession. iiuiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiuiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiM iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiwiiiiiHiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii i i iiiiii hi mi mil iiimiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiim i mini iiiiiiiiiiimiiimlii huh iiniiimim i i iiiiimmiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiin ir MOTION PICTURE HERALD, JULY 6, 1946 45