Photoplay (Jul-Dec 1944)

^ Cobra Woman (Universal) MY doodness gwacious, here comes still another of those mythical, out-of-thisworld tales with that fabulous stock company of fairy-tale actors including Maria Montez, all draped, or undraped rather, in high priestess chiffon, who gets kidnapped on the eve of her wedding to Jon Hall. Sabu, as Hall’s devoted friend, aids him in tracing his missing bride to the Cobra Isle, a place of horror to which no stranger is ever permitted by the snakeworshiping natives. As it turns out, Montez is actually the twin sister (you get two Montezes for the price of one this time) of the cruel High Priestess of Cobra Isle and has been taken there to replace the wicked sister as ruler. Now, of course, you know as I know, unless we’re both running a terrible temperature, that no such nonsense goes on, but that’s why it’s such fun and really enjoyable, like reading a fantasy of old. And Maria is loovley. Edgar Barrier, Lon Chaney and Lois Collier get all bound up in the mystic hysteria. Your Reviewer Says: Nonsense — but it’s fun! ^ Show Business (RKO) CET on the band wagon, folks, for a ride from burlesque to the Ziegfeld Follies and if you don’t enjoy every minute of its umpety-bumpety ride you should have your head examined. Even those who are averse to Cantor and his Cantorisms will laugh despite themselves and how good it will seem — that laugh — with no Nazis, no drama of broken hearts, no nothing but fun, songs and nonsense all the way. It begins when Cantor wins an amateur night contest and teams up with the es tablished star George Murphy. Later the pair join up with a sister act, comprised of Constance Moore and Joan Davis, and love hits out in all directions. Murphy marries Constance only to separate over the usual motion-picture misunderstanding of the “other woman” Nancy Kelly. Joan sets out to win Cantor and kills the audience doing it. We can see right now that this is a story that can’t be explained, for after all it’s the spirit, the gaiety, the songs, oldies and newies that lift “Show Business” right into top place. Joan Davis is a riot on wheels. That girl could wring guffaws from a marble statue. So go see it and forget your troubles. Your Reviewer Says: Whoopee! Tampico (Twentieth Century-Fox) HARD-BOILED sea captains who get all mixed up with Nazi agents are beginning to weigh heavily on our movie minded shoulders. Here we have Edward G. Robinson, same old tough sea dog of movie lore, rescuing a ship-wrecked damsel at sea whom he marries to save her being held at Tampico because her papers were lost at sea. And why wouldn’t they be, pray tell? Who carries passports about in a foaming Pacific? Anyway, when the captain’s ship is torpedoed shortly after he leaves her ashore, he suspects his bride, who is Lynn Bari by the way, of espionage. He is aided and abetted in this belief by his pal and second officer, Victor McLaglen. Furious, Robinson denounces his bride only to discover later that McLaglen is the rat. Fur flies and so did we. Your Reviewer Says: Let’s all take a nice boat ride. ^ Address Unknown (Columbia)]! |_| AD “Address Unknown” been made ( n immediately after the release of the* exciting magazine story from which itl was taken, it undoubtedly would have I been the masterpiece it now attempts to be. But its message of hate and disintegration of character through Nazism has by now been told so often from the screen even the brilliant characterization by Paul Lukas (and what an actor) fails to lift it to the heights at which it was aimed. Regardless, it’s a fine picture, beautifully done and expertly acted by Lukas as the man who becomes so imbued with Nazism he turns from his door the daughter of his former partner in San Francisco, knowing it means her death. K. T. Stevens, as the daughter of the non-Aryan partner who suffers through Paul Lukas’s fevered Hitlerism, is an accomplished performer. Drama and suspense are injected into the story when messages in code, unfavorable to the Nazi cause, begin to pour in upon Lukas in Germany from San Francisco. His inability to explain them or to halt their flow causes Lukas to be seized by the Nazis as a traitor. It’s only when the final message is returned to America marked “Address Unknown” that it is revealed the trick messages which have led Lukas to his death had been sent, not by the non-Aryan father of Miss Stevens, but by her fiance and Lukas’s own son. Peter Van Eyck as the son is an _ actor that shows great promise. Mady Christians as the wife of Lukas is ; a brilliant actress. Morris Carnovsky as the bewildered partner of Lukas and Carl Esmond as the German who leads Lukas into his hell of hate are both good, Your Reviewer Says: We recommend it. 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