The Film Daily (1939)

&*\ DAILY Tuesday, January 31, 1939; : :< :< REVIEWS Of THE P.EW flLHIS iV > "Idiot's Delight" with Norma Shearer, Clark Gable MG'M 1 Hr., 45 Mins. ACTING FIELD DAY FOR GABLE AND SHEARER IN FAMOUS STAGE PLAY WITH TIMELY TOPIC. The famous stage play of Robert E. Sherwood has been expanded on the screen to almost a two-hour show, and with authentic shots of the Swiss Alps has been made very impressive pictorially. The war drama that shows no marching troops and trench scenes but only sketchy shots of bombing planes flying over the mountain hotel, is timely film fare, with the war tension still prominent on the newspaper front pages. It takes a long time for the production to get going, much footage being taken up with the early career of Clark Gable as a vaude actor, in and out of various acts after he returns wounded from the World War. While assisting a mindreader, he meets Norma Shearer on the same bill, a member of an aerial act. The young girl is infatuated with Gable, and her imaginative nature and sensitivity are shown in contrast to his easy-going and hardboiled attitude toward life. Thus they part to go their separate ways in show business, not to meet till the present time, and in highly dramatic circumstances on the verge of another world war. The scene is a swank hotel on the border of a small country in the heart of the European impending holocaust of war. Gable is touring Europe with a troupe of six blondes doing a pocket revue as their manager. To the hotel comes Edward Arnold, the world famous ammunitions manufacturer, accompanied by Norma Shearer as his mistress and business associate. She has adopted a pose of a Russian princess, and keeps up the fiction when Gable accosts her as his old flame back in Omaha. Here in the hotel the playwright gets over his thesis on the futility and imbecility of war, which gives the play its title. Among the hotel guests are a scientist (Charles Coburn), a young antiwar agitator (Burgess Meredith), and a young Englishman and his newly acquired bride on their honeymoon. The drama reaches its climax as all flee across the border to safety before an impending air raid on a nearby aviation field, all except the phoney Russian princess, who has been left behind by the ammunitions maker. Gable sees his troupe safely off, and then returns to the hotel, for the girl has at last given him to understand that she is his brief love of years ago in Omaha. There they stand together in the hotel observation room as the world goes mad and bombs drop all about them from the sky, waiting momentarily for death together, but living again whimsically their life on the vaude stage— living their lost dream which to them is now the only reality, the only sanity. All the rest of the world is mad. The playwright's thesis is not clearcut and impressive. It teeters around on too many points. But as far as Clark Gable and Norma Shearer are concerned it gives them both a field day, and both take full advantage of it. All the other parts are incidental, subordinated to the two principals. Clarence Brown in his direction has clung closely to the original play. Burgess Meredith is immense in one or two short scenes. CAST: Norma Shearer, Clark Gable, Ed "Son of Frankenstein" with Basil Rathbone, Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi Universal 95 Mins. SWELL HORROR THRILLER WILL MOP UP WITH GREAT ACTING OF THE FIVE PRINCIPALS. A real horror production that will give all the thrill fans a treat. It is a far better constructed play than the first "Frankenstein," and with Basil Rathbone and Lionel Atwill in the cast in addition to Karloff and Lugosi, it is one of the finest acted thrillers ever produced. All of the five principals give grand performances. The story builds to fine suspense, and the horror scenes have been handled expertly. The entire atmosphere, especially the scenes in the gloomy castle, will bring delicious creeps down the spines of all the thrill addicts. Willis Cooper is to be highly commended for a grand screenplay, and director Rowland Lee has proved himself one of our best directors of taut suspense. Rathbone as the son of Baron Frankenstein, the scientist who created the Monster, returns to occupy the ancient castle in the little European mountain village. He brings with him his wife and baby boy, and his butler and handy man, who assists him in his laboratory experiments. Bela Lugosi as a demented villager who has escaped hanging by being pronounced dead and coming to life again after being cut down from the scaffold, is as sinister in his way as the Monster (Boris Karloff) himself. He leads Rathbone to a dungeon cell in the outside laboratory on the mountain, and here discloses that the Monster still lives, but in a sort of coma as the result of an accident years before. Rathbone, eager to prove that his father's experiment was meant to aid and not injure humanity, restores the Monster to normal activity. Then the horrors start, as the Monster escapes, and kills several people, including the last two villagers on the jury who had condemned the demented man to hanging. The work of Atwill as the local police inspector who lost his arm when a boy in an attack by the Monster is superb. He and Rathbone match wits, one trying to uncover the whereabouts of the hidden Monster, and the other trying to conceal him for further experiments. The climax has the Monster obliterated in a seething sulphur spring, and the demented cause of the crimes shot by Rathbone. CAST: Basil Rathbone, Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Lionel Atwill, Josephine Hutchinson, Emma Dunn, Donnie Dunnagan, Edgar Norton. CREDITS: Producer, Rowland V. Lee; Director, same; Screenplay, Willis Cooper; Cameraman, George Robinson. DIRECTION, Excellent. PHOTOGRAPHY, Fine. ward Arnold, Charles Coburn, Joseph Schildkraut, Burgess Meredith, Laura Hope Crews, Skeets Gallagher, Peter Willes, Pat Patterson, William Edmunds, Fritz Feld. CREDITS: Producer, Hunt Stromberg; Director, Clarence Brown; Author, Robert E. Sherwood; Screenplay, same; Cameraman, William Daniels; Editor, Robert J. Kern. DIRECTION, Excellent. PHOTOGRAPHY, The Best. "Mr. Moto's Last Warning" with Peter Lorre, Ricardo Cortez 20th Century-Fox 71 Mins. ONE OF THE BEST OF MR. MOTO SERIES WITH PETER LORRE IN VERY THRILLING ROLE. Exciting crime thriller staged in the colorful atmosphere of Port Said near the Suez Canal, as Peter Lorre in the role of the Oriental detective matches wits with a gang of international snies bent on causing trouble between England and France. Their plot is to blow up the French navy as it steams toward the Canal, and make it appear that an English agent did the deed. But Mr. Moto of course is trailing the conspirators and manages to thwart the dastardly deed just in the nick of time. Ricardo Cortez is the head of the spy ring, posing as a ventriloquist to cover up his real activities. The scenes in a dive in Port Said are very colorful and wellhandled. The suspense keeps mounting gradually throughout the footage, culminating in some real thrill-meller material as it looks as if Mr. Moto at last has met his match in the wiley Cortez who outsmarts him and has one of his henchmen ready to drop him into the Mediterranean tied in a sack. But Moto has loosed his wrists with a piece of sharp steel, cuts his way through the bag and comes to the surface in time to prevent the blowing up of the battleships. Peter Lorre has one of his best Mr. Moto roles in this production, for the plot is well conceived and logical. Ricardo Cortez is admirable as the foreign agent. CAST: Peter Lorre, Ricardo Cortez, Virginia Field, John Carradine, George Sanders, Joan Carol, Robert Coote, Margaret Irving, Leyland Hodgson, John Davidson. CREDITS: Producer, Sol Wurtzel; Director, Norman Foster; Authors, Philip MacDonald, Norman Foster; Cameraman, Virgil Miller; Editor, Norman Colbert. DIRECTION, Very Good. PHOTOGRAPHY, Fine. Farewell for Max Stahl Cincinnati — Max Stahl, retiring business manager for United Artists was tendered a farewell dinner by Queen City Variety Club yesterday at the Variety Club rooms. Harris Dudelson, Fritz Witte and Joe Oulahan completed the arrangements. Stahl was tendered a handsome grip. Form Ballyhoo Club Chicago — Theater and film press agents have organized the Ballyhoo Club, with headquarters at the Morrison Hotel. Officers will be elected at the next meeting. FDR Sees "Ballerina" "Ballerina," distributed by Mayer & Burstyn, was screened for the President and Mrs. Roosevelt at the White House Saturday night. "The Girl Downstairs" with Franciska Gaal, Franchot Tone M-G-M 76 Mins. CHARMING PERFORMANCE BY r NCISKA GAAL MAKES WEAK CINDeL.lA STORY PASSABLE. A light trifle of the Cinderella theme done with charm because of the appeal of Franciska Gaal, not to be taken seriously. It is from a Hungarian story by Sandor Hunyady, and tells of the romance of the scullery maid for the smart man-about-town played by Franchot Tone. He is in love with the daughter of the rich man (Walter Connolly) who has no use for the youth he considers an idler. Franciska Gaal as the little scullery maid in the downstairs domain is thrown around by the rest of the hired help. Tone uses her to gain access to the house from which he has been ordered by the irate father. In the process of using the lowly servant for his own purposes, he gradually falls in love with her. The story carries through some unbelievable scenes that are made palatable by the charm and naive grace of Miss Gaal, whose work is far superior to the rather silly and inept story. Tone goes through his part with a sort of tongue in cheek attitude, and one cannot blame him. Here is a production that seems gotten out for the shopgirl trade, for it can hardly anneal to a discriminating and ordinarily critical audience with its childish Cinderella theme. But for the performance of Franciska Gaal, nothing but praise, and all the more so that she sustained her charm with such flimsy material. Reginald Owen appears briefly as a pesky pal of the hero. Franklin Pangborn does his usual effeminate role as the secretarv of Connolly. The latter is admirable as the dyspeptic and grouchy father of the girl. Rita Johnson plays this thankless role, which is merely a fill-in part on which to build the performance of Miss Gaal. CAST: Franciska Gaal, Franchot Tone, Walter Connolly, Reginald Gardiner, Rita Johnson, Reginald Owen, Franklin Pangborn, Robert Coote, Barnett Parker, James B. Carson, Billy Gilbert. CREDITS: Director, Norman Taurog; Author, Sandor Hunyady; Screenplay, Harold Goldman, Felix Jackson, Karl Noti; Cameraman, Clyde De Vinna; Editor, Elmo Veron. DIRECTION, Good. PHOTOGRAPHY, Fine. Gus Sun Vaude Agency Passes to New Company Detroit — Gus Sun Vaudeville Agency, Inc., is being taken over by a new corporation with Gus Sun as president, Bob Shaw as vice-president, and John W. Todd as secretary, treasurer, and general manager. Shaw retired in 1931 after ten years as manager of the Sun office in New York, and has been in California vacationing since. Jack Dickstein, former owner of the Detroit office, will be a Wayne County deputy sheriff for the next two years.