Harrison's Reports (1950)

August 12, 1950 HARRISON'S REPORTS "Bunco Squad" with Robert Sterling, Joan Dixon and Ricardo Cortez (RKO, no rel. date set; time, 67 min.) A fairly good program thriller, revolving around police efforts to break up a ring of fake mediums who victimise bereaved persons by pretending to communicate with the dead. It is an unpretentious production, and its story is not startling, but it should serve adequately as a supporting feature in secondary theatres, for it has a generous share of fast action, excitement and intrigue. The direction and acting are competent, considering the confines of the script : — En route by train to Los Angeles, Ricardo Cortez, a swindler, makes the acquaintance of Elizabeth Risdon, a wealthy widow, who was bringing back the body of her soldier son for burial. He meets also Marguerite Churchill, her secretary, from whom he learns that Miss Risdon is consulting a fake psychologist. Arriving in Los Angeles, Cortez rents a pretentious house, rounds up Bernadine Hayes, a fake medium; Vivien Oakland, a fortune teller; Robert Bice, a fake swami; and John Kellogg, a con man, and establishes them under the name of the Rama Society, devoted to the study of the occult. He then compels the fake psychologist to steer Miss Risdon to the Society's house, where Berna' dine, through information obtained by Cortez, convinces her that she is in communication with her dead son, and influences her to make a will leaving her millions to the society. Marguerite, alarmed over the situation, confides to Cortez that she is going to the police. He sends her to her death by tampering with the brakes of her car — a means he planned to employ on Miss Risdon as soon as she signed the will. Meanwhile Robert Sterling and Douglas Fowley, of the police department's bunco squad, discover that Bernadine and the other fakes had disappeared from their usual haunts. They trace them to the Rama Society, where they see Miss Risdon and realize that she is being prepared for a fleecing. When she refuses to listen to their warnings, the police set up Joan Dixon, Sterling's girl-friend, as a medium, to win Miss Risdon's confidence and lure her away from the Rama Society. Cortez, learning that Miss Risdon had been to another medium, thinks a rival crook is trying to chisel in on him. He visits Joan, ties her up, and carries Miss Risdon out of the house, determined to kill her at once. Just then the police arrive. Cortez drops Miss Risdon and jumps into her car to escape, forgetting that he had tampered with the brakes. Unable to stop the car, he plunges to his death over a cliff. It was produced by Lewis J. Rachmil and directed by Herbert I. Leeds from a screen play by George Callahan, suggested by a story by Reginald Taviner. Unobjectionable morally. "Let's Dance" with Betty Hutton and Fred Astaire (Paramount, November; time, 111 min.) This Technicolor mixture of comedy, romance, music and dancing should prove to be a pretty good box-office attraction because of the popularity of Betty Hutton and Fred Astaire, but as entertainment it is not exceptional. The story is thin, hackneyed and even silly in spots, and its running time of 111 minutes is much too long, making for a number of dull stretches. Musically, however, the picture is fairly satisfying, for Astaire's dance routines are fascinating, and the spirited singing style of Betty Hutton, who joins Astaire in several dance numbers, is highly effective. The musical highlight of the picture, one that is good for many laughs, is the "Oh, Them Dudes" square dance number, with Betty and Astaire dressed as old-time Western gunmen. The comedy for the most part is broad and should entertain those who are easily amused: — The story opens in 1944 with Betty and Astaire entertaining troops in England. When he proposes marriage, she informs him that she h;id secretly married a soldier who lived in Boston, because she had become tired of waiting for him (Astaire) to propose to her. Five years later finds Betty a widow with a young son, living unhappily in the strait-laced atmosphere of the Boston home of Lucille Watson, her husband's wealthy grandmother. Rebelling against the restrictions, Betty "kidnaps" her son and heads for New York to reenter show business. Several months later, jobless and broke, she meets Astaire, who barely supports himself dancing in a night-club. He helps her obtain a job as cigarette girl at the club, where her son, adored by the help, leads a topsy-turvy life by sleeping during the day and staying awake during the night. Roland Young and Melville Cooper, Miss Watson's attorneys, trace Betty to the night-club and start a suit to gain custody of the child for the grandmother on the grounds that the night-club atmosphere is unhealthy for him. In court, the judge sympathizes with Betty and grants her 60 days in which to establish a proper home for the child, a decision that stems from Astaire's announcement that he will marry her. But a quarrel between Betty and Astaire disrupts the marriage plans, and Betty becomes involved with Shepperd Strudwick, a wealthy college chum of Astaire's, while Astaire makes a play for Ruth Warrick, Miss Watson's granddaughter. After numerous complications, during which Betty and Astaire keep baiting each other, the court officials take the child to the grandmother because of Betty's failure to establish a proper home. Betty again kidnaps her son and, after much confusion, she agrees to marry Astaire and is permitted by Miss Watson to retain the child. It was produced by Robert Fellows and directed by Norman Z. McLeod from a screen play by Allan Scott, suggested by a story by Maurice Zolotow. The cast includes Harold Huber, Barton MacLane, George Zucco and others. Suitable for the family. "The Black Rose" with Tyrone Power, Orson Welles and Cecile Aubry (20th Century-Fox, October; time, 120 min.) From the production point of view, this costume adventure melodrama leaves nothing to be desired; it is a magnificent Technicolor spectacle, filmed in England and North Africa on a highly lavish scale, and its backgrounds, which range from medieval England and its massive castles to the Mongolian desert and the lush palaces of ancient China, give the film an opulence that is breathtaking in its magnificence. Unfortunately, the quality of the rambling story does not match that of the production values, for their long dull stretches where the pace is extremely slow because of excessive dialogue. Moreover, the editing is choppy, and a number of the sequences lack coherence. Briefly, the story, which is based on Thomas B. Costain's best-selling novel, takes place at the time of the Saxon Norman feuds in the 1 3th Century. Tyrone Power, a young Saxon, the illegitimate son of a dead nobleman, refuses to serve the Norman king and decides to leave England to seek adventure in the Far East. He takes along Jack Hawkins, a friend. Months later they arrive in Antioch, where they join a caravan led by Orson Welles, a tyrannical Mongolian war lord, whose troops were carrying gifts to the Kubla Khan in Mongolia, including Cecile Aubry, a slave girl, known as the Black Rose. Welles takes a liking to the two daring Englishmen, and in the course of events Power rescues Cecile and falls in love with her. When Hawkins can no longer stomach Welles' savageries, Power arranges for him to escape to China with Cecile. Welles puts Power to torture for aiding the escape but spares his life. When Welles' troops reach the China border, he dispatches Power to impress the Empress with the size of his army, hoping to score a bloodless coup. Arriving at the palace, Power is taken for a God and soon finds himself quartered with Hawkins and Cecile. They arc treated royally, and learn from the Chinese the secret of the compass, and of making paper and explosives. In due time Welles attacks the city, and all three, now imprisoned by the Chinese, decide to escape. Hawkins dies in the escape attempt, and Cecile loses her way, but Power manages to return safely to England, where he is honored by the king and his estates restored for bringing back the Chinese secrets. His happiness is complete when two Mongol officers arrive with Cecile, sent to him by Welles as a friendly gesture. Although the pace is generally slow, the action docs have moments of high excitement, such as troop maneuvers in the desert; a dramatic bow-and-arrow contest; and the punishment meted out to Power, who is made to walk a thick rope while Mongol soldiers hit him with inflated pig bladders so that he might lose his balance and fall on upended knives. The extensive advertising campaign Fox is giving to this picture should be of considerable help at the box-office. It w;;s produced by Louis D. Lighton and directed by Henry Hathaway from a screen play by Talbot Jennings. Suitable for the family.