Motion Picture Herald (Mar-Apr 1945)

SHOWMEN'S REVIEWS SHORT SUBJECTS THE RELEASE CHART This department deals with new product from the point of view of the exhibitor who is to purvey it to his own public. Wonder Man RKO-Goldwyn — Kaye and a Twin Brother Danny Kaye may have been unknown to many when "Up in Arms" first brought his eccentric capers to the screen, but since then he has become, by virtue of that film and a weekly radio show, a national delight. Samuel Goldwyn has surrounded him with another spectacular Technicolor show, with beautiful girls in abundance, and given him free rein to be himself — and a twin brother besides. The results should leave few stubborn souls outside the camp of Kaye fans. While the film's highlights are the specially staged numbers in which Danny, as the night-club singing brother, makes the most of the unique comedy material supplied bv his wife, Sylvia Fine, he proves himself a master, too, of incidental byplay and dialogue. "Otchi Tchorniya," as sung by a Russian baritone with hay fever, brought down the house ; but Kaye, as the scholarly brother hearing harp music in a delicatessen, can clown in the more familiar Hollywood and Hope manner as well. To start at the beginning of the screenplay on which Don Hartman, Melville Shavelson and Phillip Rapp collaborated merrily, there's Buzzy, the cafe cut-up, who knows too much about a gangster murder and gets his in a lake in Prospect Park. His very learned twin is buying potato <;?lad when an irresistible call impels him to Brooklyn. Buzzy appears — invisible to everyone but Edwin — and outlines his plan for revenge. If Edwin will take his place until the case is solved, he will help him out in the pinches. There are two girls, one for each, and some incredulous gunmen to complicate the plan. The inevitable chase leads onto the stage of the Metropolitan Opera where Edwin — with promptings from Buzzy — joins the performers and sings his information to the District Attorney in a box, while the cast carries on as if it were part of the show. Aside from these doings, which kept the audience laughing right along, there's an exhibition of tap dancing by a pretty newcomer named VeraEllen which brought a hearty round of applause. S. Z. Sakall gives some uproarious comedy support, and Virginia Mayo gets the live Kaye at the end. Bruce Humberstone's direction overrides the difficulties of two Kayes, one real and one gfiostly. with a measure of ease. The original story by Arthur Sheekman was adapted for the screen by Jack Jevne and Eddie Moran. Seen at a preview in the Astor theatre, New York, where a houseful of exhibitors and guests kebt ut> a steady interference of chuckles. Reviewer's Rating : Excellent. — E. A. Cunningham. Release date, not set. Running time. 98 min. PCA No. 10658. General audience classification. Edwin Dingle 1 Danny Kaye Buzzy Bellew ) Ellen Shanley Virginia Mayo Midge Mallon Vera -Ellen Schmidt S. Z. Sakall Donald Woods, Allen Jenkins, Ed Bronhy. Steve Cochran. Otto Kruger. Richard Lane. Natalie Schafer, Huntz Hall. Virginia Gilmore. Ed Gargan, Alice Mock, Gisela Werbiseck and the Goldwyn Girls. Escape in the Desert Warner — "Petrified Forest" with Nazis Robert E. Sherwood's "The Petrified Forest," produced some years ago by the same studio with such success that it 'made a star of Humphrey Bogart, has been adapted by Marvin Borowsky and written by Thomas Job in a fashion which substitutes escaping Nazi prisoners-of-war for the gangsters of the original, and Helmut Dantine for Mr. Bogart. With these and other switches calculated to achieve timeliness, the picture comes to the screen as a melodrama lacking much that distinguished the original and providing nothing of moment in compensation save some gunfire and fisticuffs which do not reedem, and dialogue and situations that defy cast and director. It compares with its ancestor as the blunderbus compares with the rifle. The time is now, the setting a desert hotel near the Navada-California border, and Philip Dorn portrays a Dutch aviator, on his way from the Atlantic to the Pacific theatre of war, who has stopped there and is present when four Nazis, escaping from an American prison camp, arrive and take over. After a series of incidents and conversations, some of which subordinate drama to comedy at the expense of the picture at large, the Nazis are apprehended and the Dutch flier bests their leader in man-to-man combat. Dorn, Dantine and Samuel S. Hinds, the Jatter stealing the picture in many a sequence, furnish portrayals which give the picture moments of strength apart from that which lovers of , action may find in the final sequences. Producer Alex Gottlieb and director Edward A. Blatt were overmatched against an assignment most producers and directors would have lacked the courage to tackle. Previezved at the Forum theatre, Los Angeles, where it followed the reissued "Naughty Marietta," and got by. Reviewer's Rating: Average. — William R. Weaver. Release date, May 19. 1945. Running time, 81 min. PCA No. 9777. General audience classification. Philip Artweld Philip Dorn Captain Becker Helmut Dantine Tean Sullivan. Irene Manning, Alan Hale. Samuel S. Hinds, Bill Kennedy, Kurt Kreuger. Randolph Anders, Hans Schumm. Blayney Eewin. Blithe Spirit Two Cities-G.F.D. — Ghostly Gambols Let's say outright this is the smartest, most sustainedly effervescent, consummately contrived comedy yet to emanate from Britain's movie makers ; an exhibit, moreover, demonstrating that the emphasized earnestness which went into the making of things like "Western Approaches" and "Henry V" can take time out to throw an occasional frolic. Stage-nlay addicts will be familiar with the theme of the piece, for whose early trans-Atlantic shipment high official priorities have been arranged. They — and others — might well have foreseen in its translation to the screen a profoundly distasteful experience. Certainly, in the event, it's a ready, money bet that the Production Code's administrators will reauire a second look before issuing to •the film their benison in full ; for it tells of a novelist who just for the fun of it promotes a seance whose odd consequence is the materialization of his dead-for-seven-years first wife. The lady's wraith is apparent only to her "widowed" husband. But her antic activities drive the gentleman's second wife to distraction and ultimately to death ; to which grim end husband himself ultimately is persuaded by those same antics. As potentially disagreeable a motive from more than one viewpoint as might well be proposed, yet such is the assured competence with which it is presented that never for one moment do the continually evoked chuckles take on the semblance of unseemliness. Chief credit for that circumstance goes to Cineguild — the unique team comprising Anthony Havelock-Allan, David Lean, Ronald Neame — who between them made the thing ready and put it on the screen. Certainly, Mr. Noel Coward wrote the enormously successful original stage-play ; admittedly, also, the team of film makers loyally preserved every solitary line of the waspy, naughtyish, definitely disturbing, original. But they gave it, in addition, a cinematic entity of its own ; contrived a movie which will entertain the million. Prime credit therefor goes to David Lean for his quiet, unobtrusive direction and to Ronald Neame, who never lets his cameras escape into a wallow of "glorious" Technicolor. The pastel suggestiveness, the subduedness of the color so completely attuned to the undertones of the piece, are an object lesson in Technicolor's employment. They chose their cast, too, with impeccable care. Rex Harrison as the haunted husband exhibits an immaculate, tolerant tact in the awkward social situation into which he is thrown. The disembodied wives, hovering between the physical and astral planes, are played by Kay Hammond (as nice an exhibition of seductive, sly, petulance in ghostly green make-up with encarmined lips and fingernails, as ever graced the screen) and Constance Cummings. But above all, there's Margaret Rutherford, the medium through whose agency the whole unhappy frolic occurred. Here is an actress of merit and vast good humor. She steals the picture, in the cant phrase ; will evoke gusts of laughter from London to Philadelphia's ultimate purlieus. Seen at the press showing, Odeon thetare, London. Reviewer' s Rating : Good. — Peter Burnup. Release date, not set. Running time, 96 min. Adult audience classification (British). Charles Condomine Rex Harrison Ruth Condomine Constance Cummings Elvira Kay Hammond Madame Arcati Margaret Rutherford Dr. Bradman Hugh Wakefield Mrs. Bradman Joyce Carey Edith Jacqueline Clark The Scarlet Clue Monogram — Charlie Chan Catches a Killer This rates with the best of the Charlie Chan stories, skilled Sidney Toler again portraying the Chinese detective, who takes his time about getting his man but gets him — in this case a woman. The deviltry afoot on this occasion is the attempted theft of information about America's radar defenses against submarines, but the scene is a broadcasting station where television also goes on and radar MOTION PICTURE HERALD, APRIL 28, 1945 2425