Motion Picture Herald (Nov-Dec 1946)

SHOWMEN'S REVIEWS SHORT SUBJECTS ADVANCE SYNOPSES COMPANY 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. The Wicked Lady Universal International — Old English Spice Released this month under the aegis of J. Arthur Rank by Universal-International, "The Wicked Lady" is an elaborately produced picture of a Seventeenth Century Jezebel, steeped in evil and perfidy, who uses her feminine wiles in an unending quest for love, romance and adventure. Adapted to the screen from the novel, "The Life and Death of the Wicked Lady Skelton" by Magdalen Hall-King, it is a picture designed for the more sophisticated adult audiences as many of the situations and much of its costuming and dialogue are at least spirited if not daring. As Peter Burnup, London editor of Motion Picture Herald, described the picture in his review of December IS, 1945: "Sumptuousness and sex abound in Director Leslie Arliss's film and if wit be not abundant there's ampleness — and, as some may think, more than useful plenitude — of talk of doxies and their paramours, of talking of the marriagebed and the like. Also, in that urge for exciting sumptuousness, a remarkable concern is exhibited to achieve the ultimate in feminine decollete." Margaret Lockwood heads the cast as the green-eyed, dark-haired vixen who marries for wealth, loves for adventure and murders to keep her secrets of marital infidelity and banditry always dark. James Mason, one of Britain's leading actors, is co-starred as the dashing highwaymen, while Griffith Jones and Patricia Roc are two people whose lives are disrupted and nearly wrecked by the treacherous lady. Produced by R. J. Minney for Gainsborough, "The Wicked Lady" has received a somewhat different treatment than if it had been produced in Hollywood. Previewed in the Universal projection room in New York at a screening for the trade press. Reviewer's Rating : Good. — George H. Spires. Release date, December, 1946. Running time, 98 min. PCA.No. 11465. Adult audience classification. Barbara Margaret Lockwood Captain Jackson James Mason Caroline Patricia Roc Sir Ralph Skelton Griffith Jones Enid Stamp Taylor, Michael Rennie, Felix Aylmer, David Horne, Martita Hunt, Francis Lister, Amy Dalby, Beatrice Varley, Helen Goss, Jean Kent The Time, the Place and The Girl Warner — Musical in Color Under this title fondly remembered by the aging generation as the name of a beloved Broadway musical of their youth, Warner Brothers have put together a musical of present date, as to setting, patterned in the format of the first flood of musicals loosed by the studio after talking pictures arrived. The formula — the one aboutthe financial difficulties surrounding production of a stage musical — is as old and familiar as sound on film, but the names of Dennis Morgan, Jack Carson and S. Z. Sakall are present to attract customers, and Technicolor adds some luster to the proceedings. Morgan and Carson are seen as brash young men who open a nightclub next door to the home of a famous orchestra conductor (Sakall) whose grand-daughter (Martha Vickers) is studying singing and closely sheltered. Her grandmother and her manager bring legal action to close the nightclub, but the grandfather and the girl set out to rectify this injustice by backing a musical show for them. Lots of complications occur before the happy ending. Production by Alex Gottlieb and direction by David Butler are what may be called standard for the assignment, and the screenplay by Francis Swann, Agnes Christine Johnston and Lynn Starling generates occasional chuckles. The original is credited to Leonard Lee. Some of the production numbers click, while others simply take time. The Condos Brothers, Chandra Kaly and his dancers, and Carmen Cavallaro and his orchestra, spark the enterprise while on the screen. Previewed at Warners' Hollywood theatre, where it was mildly received. Reviewer's Rating: Average. — William R. Weaver. Release date, December 28, 1946. Running time, 108 min. PCA No. 11760. General audience classification. Steve Ross Dennis Morgan Jeff Howard Jack Carson Janis Paige, Martha Vickers, S. Z. Sakall, Alan Hale, Angela Greene, Donald Woods, Florence Bates Blondie's Big Moment Columbia — Comedy Considering that this is the 20th picture in the Blondie series, using almost the same players and the identical story slant, the latest does surprisingly well in retaining the lively freshness and slapstick humor of Chic Young's comic strip. Perhaps in a film like this plot is subordinated to the characters of the players who have become an institution with the patrons who enjoy these pictures. It's Penny Singleton as Blondie and Arthur Lake as Dagwood from • beginning to end and the way the two get in and out of trouble makes for an eye and an ear-full. In the main the cast is the same as in the other Blondie pictures and essentially the same as in the popular Blondie radio show which, after years on the air, still retains its popularity. The only change concerns the part of the boss, played up to now by Jonathan Hale. In "Blondie's Big Moment" Dagwood gets a new office head, ably and comically portrayed by Jerome Cowan. Dagwood, coming back from his vacation, finds that he has a new boss. It turns out he is the man whose coat he smeared full of marmelade in the bus on the way to work. Dagwood is demoted, which upsets him, especially since he has promised his son's class a visit to the office. Blondie puts things right for the moment when she visits the office and invites the new boss to supper. The visit turns out quite differently from the way Dagwood planned it. By a ruse he gets the boss out of the office the next day and the class comes to inspect the establishment. The boss surprises them and Dagwood is fired, but everything turns out all right when it develops that a piece of land, sought by the former, actually belongs to a little boy who has been a steady visitor at the Dagwood house and who now wants to give the land to Dagwood. Seen at a New York projection room. Reviewer's Rating: Good. — Fred Hift. Release date, January 9, 1947. Running time, 69 min. General audience classification. Blondie Penny Singleton Dagwood Arthur Lake Alexander Larry Simms Marjorie Kent, Anita Louise, Jerome Cowan, Danny Mummert, Jack Rice, Jack Davis, Johnny Granath, Hal K. Dawson, Eddie Acuff, Alyn Lockwood, Robert DeHaven, Robert Stevens, Douglas and Daisy Swell Guy Universal International — Another Notorious Gentleman Showmen who will have submitted to their customers the British-made "Notorious Gentleman" by the time "Swell Guy" comes up for consideration will have the advantage of knowing how their kind of audience reacts to this kind of picture, for this one does for an American war correspondent what that one did for a British soldier. That is to say, it dwells in detail and at length on the innate and cultivated caddishness of its hero, killing him off finally under circumstances implying a momentary and essentially involuntary flare-up of nobility of character. Like the British picture, it contains much subject matter not commonly dealt with on the screen, even for purposes of stressing the sordid, and gives the audience nothing to feel good about as it leaves the theatre. This second Mark Hellinger production for U-I bears little professional kinship to the producer's notably successful "The Killers." Although the same striving for stark characterization and vivid realism is in evidence, it is frustrated by confusion along the story line, artificiality in the dialogue department and miscasting in most of the principal roles. What remains is sordidness without conviction, punctuated once or twice by incidents which carry impact without point. Sonny Tufts undertakes to portray a war correspondent without principles who returns to his home town, is hailed as a hero by all save his mother, who knows how bad he is and pleads with him to go away. Deserting at the depot a woman who has financed his return under assumption of matrimonial intent, he engages at once in an alcoholically amorous interval with the young daughter of a leading citizen, proceeding thereafter to break some of his fellow townsmen at craps and teach his MOTION PICTURE HERALD, DECEMBER 14, 1946 3361