Modern Screen (Dec 1949 - Nov 1950)

(Advertisement ) leanlf 20 Jf WHAT'S COOKING? This time I don't pose this culinary question JOAN LANSING carelessly, because the slightly staggering sum of $153,985 is being whipped into this beautiful batch of batter. Our philosopher friend GALEN DRAKE is awarding this luscious loot to lucky housewives skilled and (if you're like me) unskilled with the skillet. It's all part of Pillsbury's "Grand National Recipe and Baking Contest" with 109 cash prizes. There's certainly nothing skimpy about the Pillsbury measure being dished out in this super contest. First prize can reach $50,000 (what a windfall!!!) and 100 other winners will demonstrate their kitchen concoctions at New York's Waldorf Astoria Hotel during a 2-day, allexpense trip. Rig up those recipes you're always complimented upon (it can be for pies, cakes, breads, cookies, entrees or desserts) and maybe get in on this frankly fabulous fiesta. There's gold in that dough, ma'am! GALEN DRAKE, the mellifluous man who makes 4:00 PM (EST) on your local ABC station such good listening every weekday afternoon, adds more contest "happy talk" to his usual delivery of home-fed philosophy. **O.K., Lucy, drop the phone, time to listen to TED M ALONE! It may not be good poetry, but I want you to know-etry that the terrific Ted, sponsored by Westinghouse, makes 3:55 PM (EST) a high spot on the American Broadcasting Company day-time dial for me. MORE FOOD-FOR-THOUGHTDEPT. . . . How to look lovely and live lively is the duty of a real expert, Serutan's VICTOR H. LINDLAHR. With his diet tips and food advice, Victor has beautified more women than the combined efforts of the great Ziegfeld and Earl Carroll . . . and makes it easy as ABC — which just happens to be the network bringing you Lindlahr Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 10:45 AM (EST), Sunday at 11:00 AM (EST). Anyway you spell it Serutan's VHL leads the ladies to loveliness. ** SOCIAL NOTES: Think I'll accept ART LINKLETTER's hep and happy "House Party" invitation to join him weekdays at 12:00 noon (EST). He's such good company,., and he's presented by Pillsbury. ** LATE NEWS: It runs in the family! Mother's "mad about him," my 15-year old sister. Sue. finds him "divine" and I'm faintly a-flutter myself after a session with handsome, versatile CHARLES "BUDDY" ROGERS. The "Dream Boy" is back . . . and ABC's got him as M.C. on the new program sensation "Pick A Date," 11:30 AM (EST) daily. Ijogt) Loosing Song of Surrender: Wanda Hendrix, lovely wife of puritanical Claude Rains, finds solace in music and the arms of young Macdonald Carey. SONG OF SURRENDER Cast: Wanda Hendrix, Claude Rains, Macdonald Carey, Andrea King. Paramount New England, in 1905, is awful puritanical. So is Claude Rains (a New England gentleman, scholar and curator of a small war museum) who is wed to a young lady (Wanda Hendrix) one-third his age. She's the daughter of a local farmer, and she admires Claude's culture. She works like a team of oxen, and Claude finds her a very obedient wife — until the day she goes to an auction and returns home with a phonograph and a collection of Caruso records. Claude contends the noise is sinful and frivolous. Furthermore, if Wanda sits mooning over that machine, who'll do the chores? Worse still, a bunch of city slickers has come to spend a while at a nearby colonial mansion Claude's family used to own. Among the city folk is Macdonald Carey, handsome young man-abouttown, and fiance of the big colonial mansion's present owner. Wanda takes to sneaking off to a cave in the hills to listen to Caruso, Carey takes to following Wanda, and whoosh! you got young love. Wanda, being a New Englander, fights valiantly for her respectability, but Claude's a suspicious fellow. He turns her away from his bed and board. ("If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out," he says sternly.) Quite a bit more happens, all moderately interesting. The acting of the major roles is excellent. Wanda Hendrix here shows promise of real dramatic fire, Macdonald Carey blends authority with intelligence, Claude Rains is as elegantly expert as ever. THIEVES' HIGHWAY Cast: Richard Conte, Valentina Cortesa, Lee J. Cobb, Barbara Lawrence. 20th Century-Fox Another story from the author of They Drive By Night about the men who jockey the big trucks cross-country, hauling produce to the great markets. Veteran Richard Conte comes home from the service, discovers his father (Morris Carnovsky), a trucker, has Thieves' Highway: Valentina Cortesa has been hired by a gong of trucking thieves to divert Richard Conte, who plans to avenge his father. lest both legs. He's sold c load of toma'oss to a crooked San Francisco marketeer named Figlia (Lee J. Cobb). Supposedly, Figlia'd paid him off, they'd had several drinks, and the old man had started home. That was all he remembered until he woke up in a ditch — with no money. Probability is that Figlia's men were responsible for the tragedy. Conte swears revenge, hooks up with another trucker, Ed (Millard Mitchell) who knows where the first crop of golden delicious apples in the state can be found. They buy a load (Conte's driving a surplus Army truck, Mitchell's got Conte's father's wreck, held together with chewing gum) and start for San Francisco. Conte arrives first, goes to see Figlia. Figlia hires a girl (Valentina Cortesa) to lure Conte up to her room, and then Figlia proceeds to steal and sell Conte's apples. Conte gets out of the girl's room in time to see what's going on, and he forces Figlia to pay him for his crop. Figlia pays, but later, his henchmen roll Conte, and that's that. Conte's been paid off in front of witnesses. If he can't hang on to his money, that's his business. He's lucky they don't release his brake and send him into a ditch, the way they did his old man. Now tragedy is piled on tragedy. Partner Ed's truck falls apart, and he burns up with it, never reaching San Francisco. Conte's fiancee (Barbara Lawrence) gives him the air when she finds he's been rolled. You know there's going to be a walloping climax, and there is. This is a thriller — the way only Fox seems to make 'em — and the acting is superb. Conte, Mitchell, Cobb, Carnovsky — none's better than the other. About the Italian star, Valentina Cortesa, in her first American role, it's harder to be sure. I thought her vamping was a trifle corny, but then it was a ludicrous part she had to play. Sort of the Mata Hari of the Fulton Fish Market. Aside from one or two over-theatrical moments, she was certainly worth watching. She has a communicable warmth (a virtue not shared by many American actresses), and you don't forget her easily.