Photoplay (Jul-Dec 1938)

* HAVING WONDERFUL TIME-RKO-Radio I HIS is an "almost" picture. It is almost true to the original play — almost daring enough to call a spade a spade. Ginger Rogers is almost a Bronx gal being hoity-toity Park Avenue, but Hollywood 1938 culture keeps coming through. Doug Fairbanks, Jr. gives one of his best performances, but at the darndest times sounds suddenly like Ronald Colman. On the whole, however, many of the incidents are original and refreshingly human. It's the story of a stenographer who goes to a summer camp, meets a poor lawyer-to-be who makes school expenses by waiting on table. They fall in love, quarrel when he makes disappointing overtures, make up after she worries him to death by spending the night in the cabin of a rival Romeo. KEEP SMILING— 20th Century-Fox lOU can't seem to beat that Withers kid. Those millions of her fans will find this a substantial addition to her long list of good movies. In it she is an orphan maintained in a snobbish girls' school by an uncle who's a Hollywood director. Jane runs away; hitchhikes West; discovers the uncle, Henry Wilcoxon, has gone the way of the bottle. He has no friends except his loyal secretary, Gloria Stuart, who loves him. Gloria and Jane contrive to bring Henry back to respectability, and in the resultant flurry Jane crashes the movies. The whole piece is calculated to show off the child's many talents in the way of singing and dancing and you know she is a marvelous clown. Miss Stuart looks very lovely and Helen Westley does a nice bit, as is her habit. THE NATIONAL M 0 T • ALGIERS— Wanger-United Artists lOR once a Hollywood producer has religiously reconstructed his American version of a foreign movie (in this case, "Pepe Le Moko") after the pattern of the original. In addition, 'Algiers" has expensive production and John Cromwell as director. The story is not much, but it goes on for a long time, and carries a brooding quality which warns you to get out your handkerchiefs for the tragic ending. Hardly a single scene is shot from directly in front; Cameraman James Wong Howe must have stood on his head the entire while to get the angles he did. And the score is right in there helping out, too: trembling, wailing reed sounds, exultant crescendos, beating drums. The only fault — besides the slight sagging quality in the middle — we can find with "Algiers" is that it's oppressively arty. You're so busy watching shadow patterns you forget to die emotionally with the principals, as you should. Charles Boyer plays the exiled French thief, Pepe, who hides out in Algiers' underworld. He's living with Sigrid Gurie, a rather melodramatic street waif, but he falls in love with Hedy Lamarr ("Ecstasy") when she visits the Arab quarter. She intends to marry a fat playboy, and in the end she has to, because Boyer is caught by sly Egyptian detective Joseph Calleia. Boyer is superb. Gene Lockhart, as an informer, does the finest characterization of his career. But it's delicious, dark-eyed Hedy Lamarr, making her American debut, who steals her every scene by the sheer lovely sex she exudes. * THE AMAZING DR. CLITTERHOUSE-Warners tDWARD G. ROBINSON convincingly sheds his mobster mannerisms to become the suave Dr. Clitterhouse of Park Avenue in this way-above-average crime melodrama. In spite of his change of character and address, however, the "last gangster" doesn't entirely lose touch with his pals of the underworld. The doctor, anxious to obtain accurate data on criminal reactions for a medical treatise he is writing, joins, incognito, a gang of jewel thieves that includes Humphrey Bogart, Allen Jenkins, Maxie Rosenbloom and Claire Trevor. They accept .;he newcomer, along with his curious interest in their crime habits, and before long he is showing them several new tricks of the trade. Leader Bogart resents this usurpation of authority and his success in winning the favor of Claire Trevor. So, doing a bit of extracurricular sleuthing, he discovers the doctor's identity and threatens to expose him as a bona fide crook. Robinson's method of getting out of this tight spot is the high point of a film crammed with tense moments. The story, taken from the stage play of the same name, has been skillfully translated to screen terms. It is swiftly paced, and effectively balanced with drama and humor. Although it is definitely Robinson's picture from start to finish, Director Anatole Litvak has also made the most of a splendid supporting cast. Claire Trevor, as usual, turns in a good performance and Humphrey Bogart is a first-rate menace. You'll laugh at Allen Jenkins and Maxie Rosenbloom. * LITTLE TOUGH GUY-Universal I HEY'VE done it again, those "Dead End" kids. Of course, if you examine the rather fabricated story too closely, you will find both this idea and that of "Crime School" had the same origin. Still, there is the quality here of simple humanity which must necessarily be recognizable to any audience. The piece opens in a lower middle-class home in which live the father, a laborer, the mother, a nagging, selfish, complaining woman, the daughter, lovely and intelligent, and the son, adolescent and pliable. Billy Halop has this latter role. The father gets into trouble during a strike riot, is accused of murder, is sent to prison. His family, impoverished, moves to the slums where they live on the daughter's income from a chorus job. Billy sells papers, joins a tough gang composed of the "Dead End" bunch. Then follows a succession of crimes with Billy's point of view warped to fit that of his companions. He burns warehouses, steals, holds people up. Eventually he is captured and sent with the others to reform school where the kindly influence and discipline make a fine citizen of him. Despite all these months in Hollywood, there is no indication that the "Deadly" brats have gone "rahfeened" as yet. They are still ineffably despicable in characterization. Helen Parrish, the daughter, is good. Robert Wilcox plays her boy friend and Marjorie Main is very believable as the mother. Yet, again, it is those kids who must fascinate you. One of their scenes, in which they break up a mission, is little short of a cataclysm. 52