Motion Picture Review Digest (Jan-Dec 1936)

MOTION PICTURE REVIEW DIGEST 117 "Audiences liking clean-cut yarns of ranch life will enjoy this feature whose story gives Fred Scott, singing western star, ample opportunity to show vocal, pugilistic and riding skill." + Film Daily p8 S 22 '36 "This film is mildly amusing program fare suitable for kiddies and dyed-in-the-wool Western fans. Fred Scott is a personable chap, built especially for action films. . . Given a less hackneyed yarn and a little support he will undoubtedly win high favor with all patrons of action pictures." 1 Hollywood Reporter p4 S 24 '36 1 Motion Pict Daily p4 S 22 '36 "Scott is personable, self possessed, a pleasant singer. The picture itself is routine entertainment with usual action quota, sure to satisfy where this stuff goes. Estimate: okey." + Phila Exhibitor p39 O 1 '36 The scenes are brief, but complete or suggestive of completeness, and the photography is superb." S. M. Mullen + + Motion Pict & Family p5 N 15 '36 "This innocuous football story is lacking in originality and includes too many football games to create suspense; however the sincere young cast is so capable and refreshing that the picture will please youngsters and football fans. Family." f Nat Council of Jewish Women O 28 '36 "General patronage." Nat Legion of Decency O 29 '36 "A. Y & C: good." Parents' M p46 Ja '37 "Family." Sel Motion Pict pl2 N 1 '36 ' 'Familyjuvenile. ' ' Wkly Guide O 24 '36 ROSE BOWL. Paramount 75min O 30 '36 Cast: Tom Brown. Eleanore Whitney. Benny Baker. William Frawley. Larry Crabbe Director: Charles Barton Based on the novel O'Reilly of Notre Dame by Francis Wallace. "The small town team in the middle west makes good locally, thanks to the playing of Tom Brown and Benny Baker and the coaching of William Frawley. At the end of the season it is headed for the Rose Bowl, but needs some national publicity to put it in the running. This is secured with stories of supposed romances of the two players which also involve Larry Crabbe of the rival coast team. On the strength of this gentle jogging of public enthusiasm the team goes to the Bowl and wins." (Hollywood Reporter) Audience Suitability Ratings "A: stupid; Y & C: inane but harmless." Christian Century pl574 N 25 '36 "Some unique angles in football tricks and splendid pictures of the game. A thoroughly enjoyable picture of college life without a single drinking scene. Good light entertainment for the family." Am Legion Auxiliary "Although the theme is not new, the presentation is entertaining, the actors well cast and the comedy fresh and amusing. Family." Calif Cong of Par & Teachers "Good entertainment. Family." Calif Fed of Business & Professional Women's Clubs "Good-family." DAR "Family." E Coast Preview Committee "The film could stand some cutting. Benny Baker in a secondary comedy role nearly steals the show. Good family entertainment." Nat Soc of New England Women "The clash situations are very realistic and the whole is interspersed with keen humor and cleverly appropriate repartee. Especially appealing to all lovers of this sport. Entirely free from drinking sequences. Family." S Calif Council of Fed Church Women "Family." Mrs T. G. Winter Fox W Coast Bui N 7 '36 "This [is] a most enjoyable picture for the family. Family & junior matinee." + Gen Fed of Women's Clubs (W Coast) O 26 '36 "This is outstanding as a football picture. All the old tricks are abandoned: no blustering, hard-boiled coach, no last minute victory by a Cinderella football hero, no rah! rah! college, rough style of student conduct. One feels as if the director must know college as it is. More than that the picture is cinematically good. . . Newspaper and Magazine Reviews "We can't pin any posies on this pigskin epic. Family." h Christian Science Monitor pl7 O 31 '36 "Quite entertaining. Also unusual. . . There is no acting in 'Rose Bowl,' just a group of clean, refreshing young Americans, attending to their various affairs and fooling us into the belief that we are having a good time watching them. That is all you can hope to get out of the picture, just genuine entertainment. You will like all the people in it." + Hollywood Spec p9 O 24 '36 "On they come, the ingenuous melodramas of the gridiron. This one has an unusually adolescent plot." (1 star) Beverly Hills Liberty p44 N 28 '36 "The title of the New Rialto offering, fails to carry out its rosy promise. A series of scrimmage football matches culminating in the Rose Bowl game, it is perhaps ideal entertainment for the Rover boys, but will have little mental intoxication for 'thoughtful reader.' . . Even the producers realized that six reels of unremitting strategy with a football might fail to hold the most ardent follower of the game, and so they have injected romance. . . The complications wrich follow the couple's many misunderstandings are not only juvenile but become fairly unbearable." Marguerite 1 N Y Herald Tribune p23 D 2 '36 "It is our considered opinion, after watching the Rialto' s 'Rose Bowl' contest, that the Carnegie Foundation, in its threatened new scrutiny of football conditions, should inquire into the overemphasis on pigskin puppy love at Dear Old Hollywood. The alma mater of such gridiron stalwarts as Richard Dix, Dick Arlen and Stuart Erwin should be admonished, on pain of having to give the game back to the boys, against a repetition of the current 'Rose Bowl' scandal, the perpetrators of which have presumed to warp the eternal triangle into a pernicious pentagon." J. T. M. — NY Times p35 D 2 '36 "[It is] an amiable and diverting mixture of love and football that has a certain timeliness, because of the current mystery as to who Washington's opponent will be in the annual Rose Bowl game. . . 'Rose Bowl' [is] acceptable, if not outstanding, film fare." William Boehnel -| NY World-Telegram p33 D 2 '36 "Football stories, for the most part, are clipped from the same piece of pigskin and the penetrating odor of ham invades the celluloid transcriptions. That new material, good stuff too, can be found to orient the thundering elevens on the screen was proved a few years back when Paramount made 'Touchdown.* This isn't." Herb Sterne — Script plO N 21 '36 + + Exceptionally Good; + Good; -| Fair; \ Mediocre; — Poor; Exceptionally Poor