Film and Radio Guide (Oct 1945-Jun 1946)

36 FILM AND RADIO GUIDE Volume XII, No. 4 CHALLENGE TO HOLLYWOOD. March of Time. British Motion-Picture Rivalry. Recommended. A new McD'ch of Time presentation sets forward the challenge that British motion-picture producers are now making to Hollywood in an effort to gain a goodly share of the world’s motion-picture market. For many years British motion-picture stars, such as Noel Coward, Ronald Colman, Ida Lupino, Charles Laughton, and C. Aubrey Smith, have aided materially the success of United States films. Now the British producers propose to challenge the supremacy of Hollywood. With almost unequalled financial backing, J. Arthur Rank, controlling hundreds of motion-picture houses in England, proposes to extend British films throughout the world. With such lavish productions as G. B. Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra a n d Shakespeare’s Henry U British films will appeal to lovers of literature as well as to the general public. THE SPIDER. Detective melodrama. 20th-Fox. Robert Webb, Director, Recommended. Some eighteen years ago a bizarre stage-play. The Spidei', by Fulton Oursler and Lowell Brentano, thrilled New York audiences and ushered in a series of melodramatic mystery plays. Made now into a motion picture play, The Spider has lost much of its gripping interest and has become a detective melodrama. The significance of the title, made startlingly prominent in the stage-play, hardly appears at all in the motion-picture presentation. A series of murders, an amateur detective (Richard Conte), a mysterious young woman (Faye Marlowe), and a mindreading magician form central points in the story. Informed that her sister had been murdered some time before, an actress appeals to a private detective whom her informer had named. That person’s investigations involve him in suspicion of the crimes. In fact, the detective does act with a very high hand, indeed, transporting a corpse, entering a room officially sealed by the police, breaking jail, and in many ways flouting authorities. Lacking the mystic symbolism of the stage play, The Spider has all the virtues and all the faults of motion-picture detective stories. MASQUERADE IN MEXICO. Comedy. Paramount. Mitchell Leisen. Director. Dorothy Lamour and Arturo de Cordova lead in an elaborately produced film story of intrigue and social life in the home of a rich banker in Mexico. On her plane trip to Mexico, Dorothy Lamour, as a night club entertainer, discovers that she has been led to carry a stolen diamond for which police authorities are looking. She slips the diamond into the pocket of a fellow-passenger and thereby sets in motion a long series of amusing events. All of her own money having been stolen, she finds herself arriving in Mexico in penniless condition, and then surprisingly provided with every luxury. She accepts employment to pose as a Spanish Countess and make love to a bull fighter as a means of luring him away from a rich man’s wife. The motion-picture story gains its title from the fact that in the picturesque old monastery in which the banker lives the hostess prepares a masquerade party. This serves to introduce colorful costuming, a great deal of lovely music, special scenic sets and unique dancing. All this, with a slender thread of romantic story running through it, makes pleasant entertainment of a somewhat sophisticated nature. ROAD TO UTOPIA. Satirical Farce. Paramount. Hal Walker, Director. Bing Crosby, Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour, somewhat assisted by Robert Benchley, play high jinks in a series of ridiculous events supposed to take place in Alaska. Like Charlie Chaplin’s “Klondike” farce of years ago (The Gold Rimh) , this new absurdity shows heavilybearded, fierce “bad men,” immense precipices down which everyone seems about to slide, prowling bears, mad episodes w i t h dog sledges, confused scenes in frontier dance-halls and all the other paraphernalia of gold-mining Alaska. Robert Benchley, as an entirely needless narrator, intrudes now and then into the picture and comments upon its events as if he were a showman exhibiting the scenes. Bing Crosby and Bob Hope likewise “kid” the picture and increase the satire. Under these conditions The Road to Utopia ridicules the desperate adventures and miraculous escapes shown in pictures of many years ago. Not a grain of sense in it, to be sure, but if one wants nonsense here it is. PEOPLE ARE FUNNY. Satirizing Radio Progroms. Paramount. Sam White, Director. Persons who like the slapstick “truth or consequences” types of radio programs, and the orchestras that prefer blare rather than melody, perhaps may enjoy People Are Funny. The story concerns the development of an audience-participation radio show, and rivalry to obtain a radio contract. -lack Haley, Helen Walker, Rudy Vallee, Ozzie Nelson, and