Motion Picture Herald (Jul-Aug 1943)

1 Did. Yes, I Did," receives extended and amusing treatment by both principals with medicine balls and trapeze rings playing a part. As the three wives who hope to steal the march on their philandering husbands, Zasu Pitts, Phyllis Povah and Eve Arden were given some smart dialogue, and Miss Arden in particular makes the most of it. Joe Sawyer has a characteristic bit as a pugnacious sergeant with an eye for blondes, while Raymond Walburn stands out as the most enterprising of the witless husbands. But Bob Hope, who can't stay out of the guardhouse or in the money long enough to marry Betty Hutton, carries the show with an effortless ease that should sustain his fans and advance his fortunes. Fred Kohlmar managed the production job with skill, combining the sophisticated story, the naive charm of the principals, the musical interludes and an uproarious satire on ballroom dancing into an hour and a quarter of fun with something for everyone who admits to a sense of humor. Seen in the home office projection room. Reviewer's Rating : Good. — E. A. Cunningham Release date, Block 1. Running time, 76 min. PCA No. 9094. General audience classification. Jerry Walker Bob Hope Winnie Potter Betty Hutton Zasu Pitts, Phyllis Povah, Dave Willock, Eve Arden, Cully Richards, Marjorie Weaver, Dona Drake, Raymond Walburn, Andrew Tombes, Arthur Loft, Joe Sawyer, Grace Hayle, Evllyn Dockson, Kay Linaker, Andria Moreland, Brooks Evans. The Man from Down Under (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1943-44) Australia and Two Wars With two romances, a prize fight and the bombing of Northern Australia woven into its plot, "The Man From Down Under" has plenty of story interest as well as a fresh locale. With Charles Laughton, Binnie Barnes, Richard Carlson and Donna Reed handling the principal assignments, audiences can expect competent performances even if story threads are not always perfectly knit. The film, pointed directly to the family trade, promises to give a good account of itself at the box office. Charles Laughton has another meaty role as the sporting man from Australia with a great heart, a quick pride and a childish innocence in the field of emotions. He returns from World War I with two Belgian waifs, and without the music hall entertainer to whom he had impulsively proposed. The boy is brought up in his own former profession, boxing, and the girl is sent to fashionable schools. When all characters meet again in a country hotel, after the boy has injured his arm winning the Empire Championship, the story really hits its stride. The boy finds himself falling in love with the girl he believes to be his sister, his foster-father loses his capital to the woman he had left on the dock and, just as the arm shows signs of mending, the boy leaves without explanation. World War II brings them together again under a bombing attack by the Japanese. When the skies clear, word comes that the boy and girl are not related, that the man has been given a commission in the National Militia, and that the woman was the prime mover in both solutions. The screenplay by Wells Root and Thomas Selller, based upon the story by Bogart Rogers and Mark Kelly has a leisurely pace, giving ample range to each of the four principals, who acquit themselves well, and allowing Clyde Cook, Horace McNally and Arthur Shields to make their marks in supporting roles. Produced by Robert Z. Leonard and Orville O. Dull and directed by Mr. Leonard, the picture is a hearty blend of humor, suspense and pathos. Previewed at the home office. Reviewer's Ratting : Good. — E. A. C. Release date, Block 1. Running time, 103 min. PCA No. 9385. General audience classification. Jocko Wilson Charles Laughton Axtfie Dawlins Binnie Barnes Nipper Wilson Richard Carlson Mary Wilson Donna Reed Christopher Severn, Clyde Cook. Horace McNally, Arthur Shields, Evelvn Falke, Hobart Cavanaugh. MOTION PICTURE HERALD Frontier Bad Men (Universal) Fast Western for the Marquee Several plot variations, a cast of exploitable names and good production values place this offering well above the average Western. The film moves very fast at times, as all such pictures should. It has a subdued love theme, of more than usual interest due to the presence of Diana Barrymore, and a good supply of comedy. Its villains are tough and resourceful, and its heroes even tougher and more resourceful. The heroes are Robert Paige and Noah Beery, Jr., two Texans who bring their herd for sale to Abilene, Kan., and find discrepancies between prices paid there and prices in Kansas City. That is because a middleman, Thomas Gomez, saloon keeper, controls the local market by terror. It takes the pair some time to realize their enemy is Gomez. When they do, they terrorize him and his gunmen into silence while they establish an independent buyer's exchange. Prosperity brings quarrels between them, and Gomez acts. His men ambush and burn a valuable herd. Paige, roaring mad, provokes a gunfight in which some Gomez men are killed. Gomez works up a lynching fervor in the mob, but Beery arrives in time to stampede his cattle into town, dispersing them. The comedy and incidental aid for Paige and Beery is in the capable hands of Andy Devine and Leo Carillo. Lon Chaney is chief gunman for Gomez. Diana Barrymore provides the love interest, although not as the typical Western heroine. She handles the role of card player in the saloon with an artful blend of force and coquetry. Anne Gwynne plays the other girl gracefully. Ford Beebe produced the film, William McGann directed and William Sickner supervised the photography. All fulfilled their assignments with skill. Seen in a New York projection room. Reviewer's Rating : Good. — Floyd Elbert Stone. Release date, August 6, 1943. Running time, 77 min. PCA No. 9519. General audience classification. Claire Diana Barrymore Steve Robert Paige Anne Gwynne, Leo Carrillo, Andy Devine, Noah Beery, Jr., Lon Chaney, Tex Ritter, William Farnum, Thomas Gomez, Robert Homans, Tom Padden, Arthur Loft, Frank Lackteen. Someone to Remember ( Republic ) Performance Piece Ignoring marquee requirements and devoting attention exclusively to fineness of execution from script to screen, Republic poses herewith a problem in marketing like none the company has provided before. This is an 80-minute picture of utterly wholesome pattern, expertly acted, produced, written and directed, with no names that stand alone and no exploitation angles that declare themselves. Word-of-mouth publicity may take care of the draw, for it's a picture to please both ends and the middle of the rank and file, but that type of promotion is at low ebb in a time when the world is athrob with news of violence. The story by Ben Ames Williams is about an elderly lady who retains her apartment, in a building taken over by a college for use as a dormitory, confident that a son she hasn't heard from in a quarter century will return. She is made happy when a freshman of like name, over whom she exercises motherly influence, tells her that his father, who would be her son, is coming to visit him. She dies the night before his arrival, believing her long wait has not been in vain, and so does not learn that the expected visitor is not in fact her boy. Associate producer Robert North and director Robert Siodmak gave the Frances Hyland script excellent handling, and the performances by Mabel Paige, John Craven, Dorothy Morris and August 7, 1943 the others are superb in every particular. If the market is at this point ready to make room for a film of quality, regardless of exploitation handicaps, this one's a treat. Previewed in projection room. Reviewer's Rating : Good.—W. R. "W. Release date, A'-jrlCD!^*)*)?. Running time, 80 min. PCA No. 9272. uenna.-O lence classification. Mrs. Freeman Mabel Paige Dan Freeman John Craven Lucy Stanton Dorothy Morris Charles Dingle, Harry Shannon, Tom Seidel, David Bacon, Richard Crane, Chester Clute, Russell Hicks, Leona Maricle, Madeline Grey. Black Hills Express (Republic, 1943-44) Gun-Fighting Justice Here is another Western on the tried and true formula beamed at the critical young fry audience that likes them with plenty of fighting, two-fisted he-man stuff with a minimum of love interest. This has just that and adequately fills the bill. Don Barry's work as "Ron Walker," a gunfighter wrongly accused of a series of stage holdups, is right down the alley for a ten strike. Ariel Heath's chore as the romantic interest fits perfectly as she helps Don turn the tables on the crooked marshal and banker-mayor. Producer Eddie White gave the picture all it needed to make it click in true Western fashion while Jack English's direction took advantage of all possible action and dialogue. Wally Vernon does a good piece of acting as the deputy sheriff providing the comedy relief and comes through just in the nick of time with a bit of gunplay that saves his pal, Ron. Seen at the Hitching Post theatre, Hollywood, where a youthful audience cheered Don Barry's exploits and vocally expressed approval of the heroine. Reviewer's Rating : Good. Release date, August 15, 1943. Running time, 55 min. PCA No. 9392. General audience classification. Ron Walker ; Don Barry Deadeye Wally Vernon Ariel Heath, George Lewis, Bill Halligan, Charles Mitchell. Tartu (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1943-44) Adventure in Espionage Dependent solely upon the name of Robert Donat for drawing power in America, this melodrama about a British agent masquerading as a Roumanian Iron Guardist in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia fits into no readily discernible pattern of programing. Its 104 minutes' running time disqualifies it for secondary billing and its lack of exploitable personalities or title argues against top-spotting. Made in England by MGM's American director, Harold S. Bucquet, from a script by the American John Lee Mahin and Howard Emmett Rogers, its usefulness for exhibition in the British and other foreign markets may be greater than its usefulness here. It offers American showmen little. The picture is a late addition to that early succession of melodramas in which British or American agents were represented as superclever people who could make their way into the Axis countries wearing disguises which so completely deceived the enemy — who never applied finger-print or other identification tests — that they could take positions of trust and, at the appropriate moment, destroy enemy plans, installations, ships, planes or something similarly vital. The implausibility which American audiences rejected in the earlier pictures, sometimes by guffawing in the wrong places, abounds in this one. That, too, may not be in England and other places the handicap it is here. It's laid on too thickly for audiences on this side. Previewed at the studio. Reviewer's Rating : Fair.—W. R. W. Release date, Block 1. Running time, 104 min. PCA No. 9245. General audience classification. Tartu Robert Donat Valerie Hobson. Walter Rilla, Phyllis Norris, Anthony Eustral, David Ward, John Penrose. 1470 Product Digest Section