Film and Radio Guide (Oct 1945-Jun 1946)

60 FILM AND RADIO GUIDE Volume XII, No. 5 (Continued from Page 55) to a special mission, which takes them to a Pacific Island under Japanese control. On the island petty squabbles bubble to the surface, and behind the squabbles are deep-set prejudices. Coney is a Jew, and under stress, some of the other men fall into calling him “yellow Jew bastard.” T. J., a former high-powered executive, bristles with the humiliation of his present need to take orders from a 26-yearold major and to rub elbows with his social inferiors. Mingo is the man with a wife at home, a wife who writes poetry with which she spurred him on at first, but a wife who now has proved unfaithful. Finch is the man whom the Japs capture, torture and ultimately kill. Finch’s death is pivotal to the drama. As a result of this death. Coney suffers from an acute sense of guilt, a guilt-feeling which is intensified by his sense of being a Jew and different. Through analysis, an army psychiatrist finally shows him that the feeling from which he is suffering is the same feeling all men confronted with the death of a buddy have in common — one moment of overwhelming relief that death struck the buddy rather than themselves. Beginning in a hospital room, the story is told through flashbacks evoked by psychoanalysis. Mr. Laurents writes with vigor ; his style is hard-hitting and sparse. His thinking is likewise forthright and honest. He has a feeling for elemental and social values and a genuine concern for the problems of human personality. In its unalloyed matter-offactness in facing the facts of war, the new play is reminiscent of Cry Havoc, a war play produced about two years ago. It departs completely from the sen Make Literature LIVE In the Classroom The following Teaching Film Custodian (M-G-M) subjects are ideally suited to classroom study: "Treasure Island" Lionel Barrymore Wallace Beery Jackie Cooper "Tale of Two Cities" Ronald Colman "Mutiny on the Bounty" Clork Gable Charles Laughton Franchot Tone "Romeo and Juliet" Leslie Howard Norma Shearer John Barrymore "David Copperfleld, the Boy" "David Copperfied, the Man" Lionel Barrymore Maureen O'Sullivan W. C. Fields Freddie Bartholomew Each subject 4 reels Rental: $6.00 (Special Series Rate) In Our Free Catalog of SELECTED MOTION PICTURES Write to Dept. “Y” Y.M.C.A. MOTION PICTURE BUREAU New York 17, N, Y. Chicago 3, III. 347 Madison Ave. 19 So. LaSalle St. San Francisco 2, Col Dallas 1, Tex. 351 Turk St. 1700 Patterson Ave. sationalism of earlier war plays like The Wookey and Heart of a City. The cast, which is directed by Michael Gordon, includes Joseph Pevney, Alan Baxter, Russell Hardie, Eduard Franz, Kendall Clark, Henry Barnard. They all turn in honest and workmanlike performances. -A A" ★ In a recent best seller, Catherine Drinker Bowen told the story of the Holmeses, autocrat of the breakfast table and Justice of the Supreme Court. Where Miss Bowen left off. Emmet Lavery begins in his new play — Magnificeyit Yankee — which starts with Justice Holmes’s arrival in Washington on the first day of his first Washington term. The new play, set between 1902 and 1933, is not so much a drama as a portrait; not so much an exposition of the public career of a great man as an intimate look into the private life of a very human one. The mood of Magnificent Yankee is akin to that of Life With Father and The Late George Apley, the shades being those of autumnal mellowness. It is a play of bright flashes and warm vignettes — of the Justice’s kidding the long line of Harvard Law School boys who served as his secretaries, of the Justice poking fun at the sobering propriety of Henry Adams, of the Justice making friends with the newly appointed Justice Brandeis. And it is the story of a great love — of how Fanny Holmes humorously found ways of imposing her will on the Justice, of Fanny in evening dress running out to a fire for sport, of how the Justice and Fanny concealed from each other their pain at being childless, of how in extreme old age for each the fear of death was largely the fear of separation from the other. Dorothy Gish brings humor, pathos, and philosophic overtone to her portrait of Fanny. Louis Calhern plays the Justice with humanity, suavity, and discernment. Arthur Hopkins has given the play the smooth, mellow production it requires. Result : Go see it ! ★ ★ ★ The Distributor’s Group, Inc., 756 West Peachtree, N. W., Atlanta, Georgia, report that a print of Danger Ahead was shipped to J. S. Gardner, Southeastern Service Co., 2666 Lamar, Memphis, Tennessee, on December 1, 1945, and never returned. All efforts to contact him have failed. Any information as to his whereabouts or the location of the print will be appreciated by The Distributor’s Group, Inc.