World Film and Television Progress (1938)

" . . . More involved than marriage Realism, Romance, Sentiment or Just Plain Slap-up Action The supporting parts are cast with care, not just rustled up from anywhere. William Boyd as Hopalong, Russell Hayden as Lucky, and old George Hayes as Windy, are a leading trio well-known and well-liked by every schoolboy. The story — does it matter? — is about a ranch foreman who drives his cattle through a dangerous pass and lures the rustlers from their mountain hide-out. There is gunplay, dynamite and hard-riding, and a blessed independence of background music. You have to go to the westerns these days to find action pounding out its own emotional score. The Last Adventurers Roy Kellino, the young British director of this trawling story, learnt his job in the studios as an operative and then as a first cameraman. His little picture — it runs about an hour and ten minutes — is rich in evidences of this training. His sea-stuff is grand. He knows how to compose a scene and adorn it ; he has a sense both for bold mass and lyric fancy. The Last Adventurers, when it keeps well off Grimsby, is real film-stuff, finely handled. On shore it is tentative, overrefined and conventional. Niall MacGinnis, fisherman of The Turn of the Tide and The Edge of the World, is the perennially seagoing star. Navy Blue and Gold Navy Blue and Gold I recommend for one performance alone — James Stewart's. I take no responsibility for advocating the picture. It is a sentimental, ill-mannered and tiresomely patriotic piece, dealing with American football, and the other social graces acquired at Annapolis, America's Naval Training College, by the y*oung persons who hope, in time, to become officers and gentlemen. The heroes are three "buddies", one a nice little rich boy from a society home (Tom Brown), one a light-hearted slacker (Robert Young) and the third just a long gawky fireman from the regular Navy. (This is the Stewart part.) Mr. Stewart is a thoroughly homely young man. He is too tall. His lower lip is too thick. His voice is slow and drawling. He has absolutely no glamour. I doubt if any producer in the world, even Mr. Goldwyn, could make an Adonis out of him. But as an actor he's good. Given a really sound part, he could be very good. Meanwhile he makes Navy Blue and Gold well worth trying, even for those who find the argot and traditions of Annapolis more foreign than Greek on the screen. 'Plain, Ship-up Action' \PRIL RELEASES The \>vful Truth (Columbia) DIRECTOR: Leo McCarey s/ IRRING: Cary Grant Irene Dunne Marie Walewska (M.G.M.) DIRECTOR: ( larence Brown STARRING: Greta Garbo ( IkiiIcs Boxer Navj Blue and Gold (M.G.M.) DIRECTOR: Sam Wood s/ IRRING. Robert Young James Stewart Lionel Barrymore Rosalie (M.G.M.) DIRECTOR Van Dyke STARRING: Nelson Eddy Eleanor Powell That Certain Woman (Warner Bros i DIRECTOR: Edmund Goulding STARRING: Bette Davis Henry Fonda Last Adventurers (Sound City) DIRECTOR: Roy Kellino STARRING: Niall McGinnis Linden Travers Dead-End (United Artists) DIRECTOR: William Wyler STARRING. Sylvia Sidney Joel McCrea Humphrey Bogart Claire Trevor Stand-in (United Artists) DIRECTOR: Tay Garnett STARR 1 NG: Leslie Howard Joan Blondell Humphrey Bogart Alan Mowbray Flight from Glory (R.K.O. Radio) DIRECTOR: Lew Landers STARRING: Chester Morris Whitney Bourne Angel (Paramount) DIRECTOR Ernest Lubitsch STARRING: Marlene Dietrich Herbert Marshall Melvyn Douglas Hopalong Rides Again (Paramount) DIRECTOR Leo Selander STARRING William Boyd George Hayes Second Honeymoor (2()th Century Fox) DIRECTOR: Walter Lang STARRI\<, Loretta Young Tyrone Power Boss of Lonely Valley (Universal) DIRECTOR: Ray Taylor STARRING: Buck Jones Smash and Grah (Universal) DIRECTOR Tim Whelan STARRIM, Jack Buchanan Elsie Randolph 35