Motion Picture Herald (Mar-Apr 1947)

THREE BEAUTIES from Costa Rica, photographed in New York, on the first leg of a tour here in conjunction with the premieres of 20th Century-Fox's "Carnival in Costa Rica". They are the Misses Sonia Lizano, Olga GudierrezPacheco and Ligia Soto-Harrison. SALES CONFERENCE, in London, of SFD and Universal-International executives. At the right, at the dais, the speaker is John Woolf; the others in order are Joseph Seidelman, E. T. Carr, Al Daff and John Jacobs. THE CLOWN INTO BLUEBEARD; CHARLIE TILTS AGAIN ON APRIL II, at the Broadway theatre, New York, United Artists will introduce a new Charlie Chaplin picture, creating news of several kinds. The picture is a mutation ot a 34-year-old tradition of the industry and the world. It is "Monsieur Verdoux", notably less than a year in the making and the first from the Chaplin works at Brea Avenue, Hollywood, since 1941. It will, as it does now in the plot appraisals, excite a new discussion about the art and/or philosophy of the world's senior comedian, the 58-year-old, much-publicized man who began in Keystone comedies back in 1913. For Charlie is no longer the sweet misfit who scrambled audience emotions in countless one and two-reel comedies and then in "The Gold Rush", "The Kid", "City Lights" and "The Great Dictator". Charlie, in fact, is no longer Charlie: his advertisements to the public announce him as "Charles Chaplin"; and there is a decorum in the campaign approved which serves as the obituary of the bumbling philanthropic wayfarer who tugged at the heart and bespoke the destiny of the masses by whom he was beloved. In "Verdoux" he is a suave dandy of a killer, a Bluebeard, murdering women so he may support his family. "Murder can be comic," Charlie has said. It also is tragic, he explains in a I 5-minute epilogue — in which the comedian, as in "The Great Dictator", once more jousts with the world's evil. It was Fascism before; now it's the atom bomb. 12 MOTION PICTURE HERALD, APRIL 5, 1947