Motion Picture Herald (May-Jun 1946)

SHOWMEN'S REVIEWS SHORT SUBJECTS SHORT SUBJECTS CHART 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. Till the End of Time RKO Radio— Posi-War Problems The first serious treatment of the problem of youth's readjustment to civil life after three years of war, Dore Schary's production comes off with complete success. Highly emotional in mood and content, directed suavely by Edward Dmytryk, and adorned by such players as Dorothy McGuire, Guy Madison, Robert Mitchum and Bill WilHams, it cannot fail to reap a rich harvest at the box office. It will appeal, primarily, to women, and to that bobby-sox crowd which already has awarded its accolade to Madison and Williams. Allen Rivkin's screenplay, based on the the indicated happy ending is both satisfactory Niven Busch novel, "They Dream of and beHevable. Home," opens with some extremely inter Performances by the principals are uniformly esting and effective sequences depicting the excellent, and Miss McGuire once more demon j u r T\;r • <. T-u strates that she is one of the finest young act discharge of Marine Corps veterans. The ,,33^3 ^he screen today. In the supporting story switches swiftly to treat m detail the ^ast, Jean Porter, pert, petite and pretty, lends readjustment problems of three of these vet sparkle to a minor role. erans, and of those encountered by Guy An extremely effective musical score by Madison in particular. Leigh Harline, directed by G. Bakaleinikoff, Sound of wind and limb, he returns to his adds greatly to the picture's impact, family in far better shape than do his com Seen at the Ambassador theatre, Los Angeles, panions : Robert Mitchum, who_ has a metal where a selected preview audience responded plate in his skull, and Bill Williams, who has ivith audible emotion. Reviewer's Rating : Exlost both legs. Madison, however, returns in cellent. — Thalia Bell. a state of mental and spiritual disorientation. Release, Block 6. Running time, 105 min. PCA due to the fact that he left home a college No. II26O. General audience classification. freshman and returns, in some ways a man Pat Ruscomb Dorothy McGuire grown, and in others still a college freshman. w;n;, -rT"',,' i^'^"^^ XT A u i 4. u 1 * 11 u William Tabeshaw Robert Mitchum He doesnt want to go back to college; he Bill Williams, Tom TuUy, William Gargan, Jean doesnt want to go to work. He doesn't, as Porter, Johnny Sands, Loren Tindall, Ruth Nelson, he himself makes clear at one point, want to Selena Royle, Harry Von Zell, Richard Benedict. do anything but lie on the beach and loaf, an attitude at once understandable and irritating to his friends and his family. ^mokv His first meeting with Dorothy McGuire OH gives him, at last, an objective, for it's a case o/iii. et^„ a j i_i of love at first sight on the lad's part. But Letltwy tOX—A Man and a Horse Miss McGuire, cast as a young war widow, ghowmen who reaped a golden harvest from has her own readjustment problem, as r-, -J , , „ j ,r™ poignant as his own. Having married, after f'^J ^^1^%^' ?^^r 1."'"^ if "1 a whirlwind romance, a youn| flyer, she has ^'J.^^^' of Flicka, produced by the same built her life and dreams arSund his home fudio, can book Smoky ^yl h entire confidence, coming, and consequently loses her moorings ,^°r, "^^the same kind of picture, and as beauti when he is shot down over France. Like the fully photographed in Technicolor. young men in the story, she is living at once Furthermore, there s Fred MacMurray for in the past and the present, a confused and marquee billing as well as Anne Baxter Bruce chaotic period of time, the way out of which J^es, that sweet-voiced singer is not quite clear whose delivery of western songs is tops. And The incidents which advance the story, there's added value in the fact that the Will interweaving as they do the lives of the three J^^^s nove on which the film is based has been young men and the girl, are handled with su '^"o^'" ,and loved for many years, perb skill, and reach their climax in a burst of s the story of a man s love for a horse, and action which constitutes the perfect release for the screenplay by Lillie Hayward, Dwight Cum the emotion evoked by preceding sequences. It's "ims and Dorothy Yost, the romantic and dra a barroom brawl, and as brisk and bloody a ^atic elements have been subordinated to the barroom brawl as ever was filmed in a West emotional, which is as it should be in this type ern. of picture. The three veterans, set upon by a group of "Smoky," real star of the piece, is shown first fascist-minded political organizers, find them as a three-year-old, a wild horse who has never selves fighting side by side once more in de known rope or saddle. A roving cowhand, at fense of those ideals and principles they had tracted at first sight by the beautiful stallion, previously fought for on Guadalcanal. The sets out to break him. The man succeeds only battle clears away the accumulation of doubt partially, for although he wins the animal's af and confusion in the minds of all of them, and fection, the half-tamed horse will allow no one else to come near him. When the horse is brutally abused by the cowhand's no-good brother, "Smoky" reverts to type, tramples his tormentor to death, and makes a break for freedom. He is eventually picked up by strangers who exploit him on the Rodeo Circuit, and when a fall incapacitates him, he is sold to a junkman and appears doomed to end his days ingloriously pulling a cart. The cowhand, however, has not ceased to search for him. After a period of years he runs across "Smoky" by chance, purchases him and puts him out to pasture on the self-same ranch where the wild horse was foaled. Robert Bassler's production is at once spacious and life-like. Louis King directed with a hand as gentle and sure as that of a horse-trainer. It's a natural. Seen at the studio. Reviewer's Rating: Excellent.—T. B. Release date, July, 1946. Running time, 87 min. PCA No. 11568. General audience classifivations. Clint Barkley Fred MacMurray Julie Anne Baxter Bill Burl Ives Frank Bruce Cabot Gram Esther Dale Roy Roberts, J. Farrell MacDonald, Max Wagner, Guy Beach, Howard Negley, Bart Geary, Harry Carter, Bob Adler, Victor Kilian, Herbert Heywood. Bedelia John Corfield: G.F.D. — Medici Murders Margaret Lockwood — easily Britain's top disstaff-side star (as is confirmed in Motion Picture Herald's poll) — herein once more rides the Wicked Lady's road; poisoning her husbands here, there and everywhere, varying the Medici-gal act with cunning, not to say calculated, cosseting of the next intended victim. It's not Miss Lockwood's fault that when she's around on the screen the piece just fails, by the tiniest degree, to convince. The lady shouldn't have been cast in such a role ; particularly when she is required to stand up to samples of accomplished acting such as are submitted here by Ian Hunter and Barry K. Barnes. What is more. Miss Lockwood's legions of fans (in Britain at least) will become excessively restive if the gentle, politely prim, odalisque of their sentimental adoration persists in her representations of conjugal wickedness. That is the major — almost the only — criticism to be levelled at the film from the showman's angle. Vera Caspary, author, put all her "Laura" ingredients into the tale. Producer Isadore Goldsmith packed up the loose ends neatly in the recent fashionable foible for psychological naurder. Director Lance Comfort rounded it all of? with well-mannered, presentation of "nice" people deporting themselves in the nicest possible surroundings, e.g. prewar Monte Carlo and Britain's much-favoured Yorkshire Dales. Mr. Hunter plays a comfortable, adoring, nevertheless satisfying, husband married to the Borgia-minded wench (Miss Lockwood). Mr. Barnes is a detective chartered by a life insur MOTION PICTURE HERALD. JUNE 15. 1946 3041