Motion Picture Herald (Jan-Feb 1948)

ADVANCE SYNOPSES and information ADVENTURES OF CASANOVA (Eagle-Lion) PRODUCER: Leonard Picker. DIRECTOR: Roberto Gavaldon. PLAYERS: Arturo de Cordova, Noreen Nash, Lucille Bremer, Turhan Bey, John Sutton, George Tobias, Lloyd Corrigan. PERIOD DRAMA. In 18th Century Sicily, Casanova, a young patriot, upon learning of the murder of his father and sister, immediately returns to Palermo and engages in guerilla tactics against the forces of the Governor. The Governor's daughter, in love with one of the patriots, wishes to escape from her father's palace and her lady-in-waiting enlists Casanova's aid. He rescues them and takes them to the partisan quarters. After many daring feats, the patriots are victorious and most of the Governor's men are captured. The Governor's daughter, free to marry, makes plans for her marriage to the patriot, and Casanova and the lady-in-waiting have similar intentions. FURY AT FURNACE CREEK (20th CenturyFox) PRODUCER: Fred Kohlmar. DIRECTOR: Bruce Humberstone. PLAYERS: Victor Mature, Coleen Gray, Reginald Gardner, Glenn Langan, Albert Dekker. PERIOD MELODRAMA. The son of an Army general, unjustly accused of giving orders which resulted in a massacre in 1880, visits the boom town of Furnace Creek seeking evidence of his father's innocence. His brother, in town for the same reason, is brought to trial when a captain, from whom he had obtained a confession clearing his father, is murdered. He is found guilty but manages to escape the frenzied mob, taking the confession to a nearby city. The other brother shoots it out with the hostile crowd and, though ■ wounded, succeeds in killing the leaders of the syndicate which controlled the town. HALF PAST MIDNIGHT (20th Century -Fox Wurtzel) PRODUCER: Sol Wurtzel. DIRECTOR: William Claxton. PLAYERS: Kent Taylor, Peggy Knudsen, Joe Sawyer, Walter Sande, Gil Stratton, Jr. MELODRAMA. At a night club, a young man with an affinity for trouble meets a girl in distress. She becomes involved in the murder of a Spanish dancer and both of them become major suspects. The couple, eluding the police, succeed in capturing the dancer's partner, who confesses his guilt. DEEP WATERS (20th CenturyFox) PRODUCER: Samuel G. Engel. DIRECTOR: Henry King. PLAYERS: Dana Andrews, Jean Peters, Cesar Romero, Anne Revere, Dean Stockwell, Ed Begley. DRAMA. A Maine lobster fisherman refuses to give up his work to become an architect. His fiancee, a welfare worker, finds a home for a twelve-year-old ward of the state. The little boy and the fisherman become close friends but the fiancee, fearful of the dangers of sea life, forces the fisherman to restrict the boy from helping him on the boats. The boy, denied the life he loves, steals a camera and is sent to a reform school. The fisherman, with the help of his sweetheart, who finally realizes her mistake in keeping the boy from the sea, succeed in getting a petition granted to adopt the boy. PRODUCT DIGEST SECTION, JANUARY 31, 1948 ARE YOU WITH IT? (Universal-International) PRODUCER: Robert Arthur. DIRECTOR: Jack Hively. PLAYERS: Donald O'Connor, Olga San Juan, Martha Stewart, Lew Parker, Pat Dane. MUSICAL COMEDY: A young executive of an insurance company is known for his infallibility. When he is told that he has made a mistake, he joins a traveling carnival. With his knowledge of mathematics, he becomes assistant at the wheel of fortune. His fiancee begs him to return to his job but he refuses. She joins the carnival and becomes a strip-tease artist. When he attempts unsuccessfully to drag her off the stage, a melee ensues and the entire troupe is arrested. The carnival is sold but the young executive reveals that the new owner has conspired to defraud the insurance company. The company has to accept the carnival in payment of what they owed and the young man and his fiancee are allowed to stay with it and help run the carnival. SITTING PRETTY (20th CenturyFox) PRODUCER: Samuel G. Engel. DIRECTOR: Walter Lang. PLAYERS: Robert Young, Maureen O'Hara, Clifton Webb, Richard Haydn, Larry Olsen, Anthony Sydes. COMEDY : The Kings, a married couple with three children, advertise for a resident baby-sitter. They hire one, Lynn Belvedere, who turns out to be a man. He becomes complete master of the household and turns it into a smooth-running machine. However, local gossips mistakenly link Mrs. King with the baby-sitter and she leaves her husband and home. At this point, however, Belvedere becomes the author of an overnight best-seller which unmercifully portrays some of the town's leading residents. Mr. King is fired by his law firm but is re-hired by Belvedere to defend him in case of lawsuits. The Kings are reunited and Belvedere assures them that he will continue as their baby-sitter. SCUDDA HOO, SCUDDA HAY (20th CenturyFox) PRODUCER: Walter Morosco. DIRECTOR: F. Hugh Herbert. PLAYERS: June Haver, Lon McCallister, Anne Revere, Walter Brennan, Henry Hull, Robert Karnes, Natalie Wood. REGIONAL DRAMA. Two stepbrothers, who have always been antagonistic, live on a mid-west farm. One of them takes a job as hired hand for a neighbor with whose daughter he is in love. He buys two mules to add to his income. His stepbrother attempts to disable the mules, but is foiled. Later the young farmer uses the mules to rescue his employer from a quagmire. Thereupon the latter gives the young man permission to marry his daughter. HERE COMES TROUBLE (United Artists) PRODUCER -DIRECTOR: Fred Guiol. PLAYERS: William Tracy, Beverly Lloyd, Emory Parnell, Jean Woodbury, Joe Sawyer. MELODRAMA. When a newspaper publisher is blackmailed by a burlesque queen, he sends one of his police reporters to hush the girl. The girl is murdered, and the reporter, the publisher, and the publisher's daughter are all suspected. The true culprit is eventually tracked down. STATE OF THE UNION (MGM-Liberty) PRODUCER-DIRECTOR: Frank Capra. PLAYERS: Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Van Johnson, Angela Lansbury, Adolph Menjou. POLITICAL DRAMA. An airplane manufacturer, with the aid and influence of a newspaper magnate's daughter, becomes Republican nominee for President of the United States. During the course of a cross-country campaign tour, the manufacturer speaks frankly to the people and does not follow the party line as expected by his political backers. Alarmed at his actions, the newspaperman's daughter persuades him to pull his punches for a final allimportant speech. At a dinner party, however, his wife drops all pretenses and tells everyone attending the truth about themselves. She succeeds in making her husband realize that the thing worth working and fighting for is the people, not the party. THE LONG GREY LINE (Paramount) PRODUCER: Robert Fellows. DIRECTOR: John Farrow. PLAYERS: Alan Ladd, Donna Reed, Harold Vermilyea, Conrad Janis, George Coulouris, Tom Neal, Dick Hogan. WEST POINT DRAMA. A cadet captain, student of the U. S. Military Academy at West Point, is summoned * before a Congressional Board of Investigation to face serious charges brought against him by the father of a former West Point cadet. It is revealed at the hearing that the cadet captain, a World War II hero, is suffering from a guilt complex that he was responsible for his commanding officer's death With the help of the latter's widow, with whom he has fallen in love, and the testimony of a fellow West Pointer, the guilt-ridden cadet is vindicated of the death of his captain and cleared of the charges brought against him at the hearing. THE SNAKE PIT (20th-Fox) PRODUCERS: Robert Bassler and Anatol Litvak. DIRECTOR: Anatol Litvak. PLAYERS: Olivia de Havilland, Leo Germ, Mark Stevens, Celeste Holm, Minna Gombell, Frank Conroy, Howard Freeman, Glenn Langan, Queenie Smith, Beulah Bondi, Ann Doran, Betsy Blair, Ruth Donnelly, Isabel Jewell, Tamara Shayne, Lee Patrick. DRAMA: An aspiring young woman writer, with a father fixation and a consuming sense of guilt that she is responsible for her fiance's death in an auto accident, meets and falls in love with a young editor. While on a "date" she suddenly leaves him and disappears. Long afterward he finds her again and they marry. She grows mentally worse and the husband takes her to a mental hospital. There, under the patient treatment of an understanding and kindly psychiatrist she slowly returns to normalcy. But not until she has seen and felt the whole horror of an insane asylum, from which she goes forth determined to help the inmates from the outside with her writings. THE HUNTED (Mono.-Allied Artists) PRODUCER: Scott R. Dunlap. DIRECTOR: Jack Bernhard. PLAYERS: Belita, Preston Foster, Pierre Watkins, Edna Holland, Michael Browne. MELODRAMA. On parole, after being imprisoned on a jewel-theft charge of which she claims innocence, a girl returns to her sweetheart, a policeman who had sent her to prison. The policeman, finally convinced that she may be innocent, gets her the lead part in an ice show. Her attorney is killed and she runs away. Realizing he loves her, the policeman resigns from the force in order to help her, but a thief confesses to the murder disclosing that the victim was the leader of a gang of jewel thieves with whom the girl had been falsely implicated. 4039