Independent Exhibitors Film Bulletin (1957)

"The Sari Sack" 'Scuckc^ "Rati*? O O O Jerry Lewis has good laugh vehicle as army goofball. Will draw well where Lewis has following. Another Jerry Lewis bag-of-tricks is delivered in "The Sad Sack", in which the antics are the sort everyone can take midway between the heart and the funnvbone. Where comedies click, this Paramount release should draw well. Hal Wallis has given Jerry a snappy production, George Marshall has directed it like a drill sergeant and scripters Edward Beloin and Nate Monaster have rigged up one of those mad and zany accounts of a walking booby trap and his bizarre adventures in learning the ways of soldiering. Lewis has a tailor-made role that fully allows him opportunity for his tomfoolery, confounding as usual those people in high places and creating comic havoc with his buddies, David W ayne and Joe Mantell. For plot, we have a two-prong affair. First, the boot camp business with Corporal Wayne's efforts at qualifying buck private Lewis as M-l rifleman; second, the ship-out routine to North Africa where dashing Jerry gets embroiled in counterspy sleuthing and sexy dancer slinkings. Lillianne Montevecchi takes care of the latter, while Peter Lorre is evil enough as an Arab cutthroat intent on stealing the secrets of the Air Force's Rapid Fire Cannon. Of course, out of all this Jerry emerges the cloak and dagger hero extraordinary, gets Wayne into the arms of \\ AC Major Phyllis Kirk, finds romance himself and winds up the most decorated private east of the Gold Coast. Paramount. 98 minutes. Jerry Lewis, David Wayne. Phyllis Kirk. Produced by Hal Wallis. Directed by George Marshall. "Hear Me Good" Rating O O Mild comedy will have to rely on Hal March TV following B.O. prospects only fair in general market. Here is yet another high-powered TV personality making his bid for Hollywood stardom and falling on his handsome face in the process. Hal March has a Broadway-dandy type of charm, a minor talent for comic ploys, a sleazy romantic aura, but he simply isn't much of an actor. And since Paramount hasn't equipped him with anything very malleable or rewarding in the way of a script, his first starring film, "Hear Me Good", must be considered of dubious boxoffice value. It will have to rely on his antenna laurels, and exhibition's experience is that the average TV personality isn't a draw. What writerproducer-director Don McGuire has concocted for him is a moderately amusing, gag-littered little tale that spoofs beauty contests and treats prohibition-type gangsterism with wild delight. March plays a down-on-his-bottom press agent full of get-rich-quick ideas that always boomerang and Joe E. Ross, another TV luminary, portrays his loyal but loony sidekick. In order to pay their hotel bill, March comes across with a sure thing: they'll put the fix on a beauty contest, bet on the winner and walk off with the chips. The blonde amazon they get for the contestant bit turns out to be an untouchable, since hood Irving the Hammer is her underw orld knight. Having gambled aw ay some of the blonde's promotion money, the boys are in a plight until pretty Merry Anders comes along. March cons her into the contest, but later gets in a bind when Irving puts his babe back in the running. March survives the gangster, helps Miss Anders to win, loses his heart to her. Paramount. 80 minutes. Hal March, Joe E. Ross, Merry Anders. Produced and Directed by Don McGuire. "All Milll! Til Imp Su4ine44 Rating Q O Plus Technicolored tear-jerker should do well in hinterlands. OK for family houses elsewhere. A true tear-jerker set against a rustic pioneer Wisconsin, circa I860, RKO's Technicolored "All Mine To Give", is brimfull with the old fashioned values of self reliance, family solidaritv and ever-abiding lo\e between husband and wife. Since our own era is in a neurotic flux, these values come across rather refreshinglv on the screen. L'nfortunately, the plot that they are part of is one of those rambling chronicle things, in which an awful lot of events happen but none seem to have very much dramatic currency. The theme and gentle pace make this good fare for small town situations, and for family houses generally. Glynis Johns and Cameron Mitchell do well enough as the stalwart couple and Rex Thompson is a fine figure of a boy as their eldest son. In fact, Master Thompson and the other five small frys that play his brothers and sisters walk off with most of the film, especially in the last fifteen minutes which should have the matinee trade wiping away their tears. For director Allen Reisner and screenplayw rights Dale and Katherine Eunson, along with a tremulous Max Steiner score, have had some very good people meet up with some very bad happenings and milked the results for all their worth. Miss Johns and Mitchell arrive in the new world as penniless Scottish immigrants only to find their one kinsman dead and his cabin burned. After surviving this, the children start coming and Mitchell must work at the hazardous job of a lumberjack and combat the anti-foreigner prejudice of his boss. Then Mitchell is bedded with diptheria and eventually dies. Miss Johns tries valiantly to keep her brood together, but she succumbs to typhoid fever. On her death bed she designates Thompson head of the family and has him promise to parcel out the children to the kindest families in town and not a state institution. RKO-Universal International. 102 minutes. Glynis Johns, Cameron Mitchell. Produced by Sam Wiesenthal. Directed by Allan Reisner "And God Created Woman" GciAiKCte IZati*} O O O Choice French import will delight art audiences. Kingsley International's latest import is by all odds the sexiest souffle France has deposited on our shores in years. It figures to be a choice item for the art houses. The main embellishment is Brigitte Bardot, who portrays the kind of girl men just can't leave alone so vividly and warmly, it's as if she newly invented this most hackneyed of screen characters. For Mile Bardot is decked out as a kind of Biblical Lilith who drives hordes of men to rack and ruin and herself under the shadows of doom and degeneracy. She starts out as a poor little orphan in the roistering seaport of Saint-Tropez, whose puritanical guardians are determined to preserve her chastity. They have their troubles w ith the girl, however, who is a w ildly romantic, headstrong lass. When the bluestockings descry Mile Bardot as a defilement of the town, she seduces a respectable young man into the marriage vows. Nevertheless, with all her past exercises in easy virtue, she promises herself to remain a faithful wife. There ensues the struggle between the flesh and the spirit, for the boys simply will not leave her alone and neither will Mile Bardot's libido. Director Roger Vadim has kept the sensationalisms pliant and provocative in an adult way. Kingsley International. 100 minutes. Brigitte Bardot. Curd Jurgens. Produced and Directed by Roger Vadim. Film BULLETIN October 28, 1957 Page 9