Modern Screen (Jan-Nov 1947)

MOVIE REVIEWS (Continued from page 14) bomb. Under the influence of this strange mixture, Harold buys a checked suit, a cowboy hat and a bankrupt circus. This is on Tuesday night. When he wakes up Thursday with a hangover, he doesn't even remember what he did Wednesday. Which is just as well, as it turns out. Wormy reminds him of the circus. "The cats are hungry," says Wormy. "Also the giraffes and the elephants." Many is the man who has wakened to a hangover of elephants, but these are real ones. Harold considers the situation. Obviously, he will have to sell the circus, but finding a customer for it is something else again. Maybe the thing to do is to mix up a batch of those "Diddlebocks" and get one of the lions and go on a customer hunt. This works fine up to a point — the point where Harold and Wormy find themselves suspended from a lion's collar eight floors above the street. Among the hilarious cast are Frances Ramsden, Raymond Walburn, Arline Judge and Franklin Pangborn — U.A. P. S. Harold Lloyd returns to the screen after an absence of seven years, waiting for the right story. . . . Lloyd and Jackie, the lion, first trouped together in "The Milky Way." However, this is the first time in Jackie's history that he ever got official screen billing, although he has worked in more than 300 pictures. . . . Sturges used Paramount's "New York Street" set for three days. He isn't superstitious, but he did manage to shoot Lloyd with one particular building as a background — the same building that was behind Brian Donlevy when Sturges made the opening shot of "The Great McGinty," the first film he directed ... As a gesture to Sturges, Rudy Vallee played a small role as one of the bankers, duplicating the staid performance he gave in "The Palm Beach Story." . . . Members of the company admired the nerve of Al Bridge, who plays the circus owner. When Jackie chewed playfully on his arm, Bridge didn't budge and kept right on with his dialogue. Later, he disclosed that lions are no novelty to him. He ran away with a circus when he was a youngster and became the assistant trainer in a "cat" act. THE TIME, THE PLACE. AND THE GIRL The time — right now. The place — New York City, in Technicolor. The girl — Martha Vickers, playing a sweet young thing called Vicki Cassel. Vicki is the granddaughter of Maestro Ladislaus Cassel (S. Z. Sakall), and is being groomed for a heavily operatic career. She has a disagreeable manager, Martin (Donald Woods), and a dominating grandmother (Florence Bates) to see that she doesn't stray from the operatic path. Vicki, when we first meet her, is only mildly discontented with this program. After all, she doesn't know what she's missing. Then she encounters Steve (Dennis Morgan) who is about to open a night club next to the Cassel house. The closest Steve has ever been to the opera was when he waited for a bus in front of the Metropolitan. But he has an eye for a pretty girl, and Vicki is a very pretty girl. Maybe he and his friend, Jeff (Jack Carson), can get her to use her influence with Ladislaus, who is apparently trying to keep them from opening their night club. They soon find that it's Martin, not Ladislaus, who is back of the attempt. Ladislaus is a genial, if bewildered, old boy, who invites Steve and Jeff and Sue (Janis Paige), their leading lady, over for a champagne party while his wife is in Philadelphia. Unfortunately, Madame Cassel returns too soon, accompanied by Martin, and this puts a definite end to the night club's chance of opening. Ladislaus feels responsible for this catastrophe. Also he likes to see young Vicki gazing blissfully at Steve. A girl should have some fun before she has to be an opera singer. Ladislaus is a romantic, of the practical school. He arranges for his wife to be summoned to Mexico City, leaving him in charge of their joint bank account. He will back a show for Steve and Vicki, thus solving all their problems. Unfortunately, Madame Cassel leaves only a few hundred dollars in the account. Complications set in, among them a Texas millionaire and a girl named Elaine (Angela Greene) who is jealous of Vicki. Let me recommend a number called, "Oh, But I Do."— War. P. S. Dance director LeRoy Prinz estimated thai Dennis Morgan, Jack Carson, Martha Vickers, and Janis Paige walked more than twenty miles a day while rehearsing dance routines on a treadmill constructed on one of the stages. . . . The piano played by Carmen Cavallaro in the film was especially designed and built in the studio shops. It's plastic, reinforced with steel, and cost some $7,000. . . . Alan Hale celebrated his fifteenth consecutive year with Warners during production by signing a new seven-year contract. . . . Prinz spent days selecting and training twelve beautiful chorines for a night club sequence which is done in blackface. . . . The actors didn't consider the set the safest place in the world after a series of accidents. Jack fell from the treadmill and injured his neck, "Cuddles" Sakall had to take a week off when a Technicolor camera dolly ran over the toes of his right foot, and Martha narrowly escaped getting beaned when the collar from a hightensity arc fell from a scaffold just above her head. I SAW IT HAPPEN Vaughn Monroe was appearing at our local theater, and one gag in his show necessitated the use of a duck ( stuffed, of course ) as one of the props. Well, everything went along smoothly until the time came when the duck was supposed to drop from the ceiling. The band members looked up; they waited; still no duck! So the show went on with Vaughn singing one of his super solos. And right in the middle, that darn duck decided he wanted to come down to earth, I guess, because bang! down he fell, startling Vaughn and the whole audience, and turning the torchy number Vaughn was singing into a hilarious comedy. And nobody laughed harder than he did. Lucille Retel Buffalo, New York THE DARK MIRROR A broken mirror, an overturned chair and a man lying dead with a knife in his back. That's the beginning. The dead man is a doctor, and two witnesses saw him taking a girl to his apartment the night he was killed. Lieutenant Stevenson (Thomas Mitchell) has no trouble getting them to identify the girl. They say she is Terry Collins (Olivia de Havilland) who works at the magazine stand in the Medical Building. "If only all cases were nice and simple like this one!" says the lieutenant. He's in for a shock, because Terry produces a complete alibi for the evening. Not the kind that could possibly be faked, either. Four different people place her at a point several miles from the scene of the crime. The lieutenant is going nuts over this problem when he learns that Terry has a twin sister, Ruth (Olivia de HavDland). Ruth, it seems, used to work at the magazine stand occasionally in Terry's place, and she too knew the dead doctor. There's no way of proving which girl was where on the night he was killed. The lieutenant goes to see a psychiatrist, Dr. Elliott (Lew Ayres) who has made a study of twins. "It's a perfect crime, Doc," he says gloomily, "and I don't like perfect crimes. They make me nervous." Elliott agrees to try and help. He meets both girls and talks them into taking a series of tests for him. He will pay them for it, and they need a job. Since they've been in the papers in connection with the murder, no one will hire them. But as Dr. Elliott gets to know them better, and as the tests progress, he gets more and more worried. He has fallen in love with Ruth. And he knows that one of the sisters is guilty of the murder. That one of them is criminally— dangerously — insane. Olivia de Havilland handles her dual role with authority, and it's nice to see Lew Ayres back on the screen. Thomas Mitchell makes the detective a human being instead of a stock figure. — Univ. P. S. No technical flaws will be found in the pic, as it was checked and double-checked in order to make sure of scientific soundness. Writer-Producer Nunnally Johnson not only consulted a practicing psychologist, but went to Washington where he had the FBI check all of his scientific data. . . . Superstition took a holiday as Olivia spent an entire morning hurling ashtrays at mirrors. Director Siodmak wanted the glass shattered in an impressively weird design and before he was satisfied, Livvy had smashed eight mirrors and ruined twelve takes. "Doesn't bother me a bit," remarked Olivia after completion of the scene, then added — "Just so J never have to whistle in a dressing room, or throw my hat on a bed!" . Director Siodmak's "X-Ray camera" promises to be the most provocative advance of 1946. Utilizing his own personally developed technique, Siodmak asserts that he is able to make the camera literally peer into the soul and ferret out secrets which the subject wants to conceal Lew Ayres uses a tried and true method of finding the truth. He tests Livvy with a real sphygmanometer (lie detector) in one scene, and was trained in the technique by John Schilling of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's office. THE SHOW-OFF Years ago,' when Red Skelton was run