Picture-Play Magazine (1933)

60 The Screen in Review Continued from page 58 "Penthouse." Warner Baxter, Myrna Loy, Charles Butterworth, Nat Pendleton, Mae Clarke, C. Henry Gordon, Martha Sleeper, Phillips Holmes. Director : W. S. Van Dyke. Just when you thought gangsters about clone for on the screen, they come hack again and this exhibit of them is worth while. Here the more elegant aspects of the underworld are exhibited, glittering speakeasies, modernistic apartments, smartly turned out dames. All this you have seen before, but the characters are different and so, too, are the situations while the acting is first class. Jt is a lively picture. . . . that's all I need to PROVE I can make YOU a NEW MAN! BY CHARLES ATLAS Holder of the Tife: "The Wodd's Most Perfectly Developed Man ON E week ! That's all I need to PROVE I can make you a new man at vitality and power. I was once a 97-lb. weakling, with a sickly, flabby body. 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CHARLES ATI.AS, Dcpt. 16-12 133 F.a.t 23rd Street, New York City I ol Dymmie-Tension Will in..! •■ j \'-u M in . I l'i I . ii hi Sen. i j frei lunik. •Everlasting Health and Strength." Pli , e i" in1 '■< ■>' '''' plainly) ShUP. © 1983, C. A. Ltd. Warner Baxter is a criminal lawyer who saves a gangster from the electric chair and wins his undying gratitude. It really is undying bccause the criminal sacrifices himself for Air. Baxter and expires with a litany of devotion on his lips. This character is most engagingly played by the hard-boiled Nat Pendleton who won a Metro-Goldwyn contract on the strength of it. Mr. Baxter's later activities are concerned with Phillips Holmes who, accused of murdering his ex-mistress, is cleared when guilt is fastened on C. Henry Gordon. Myrna Loy. though miscast as an underworld hanger on, plays the character as gracefully and as humorously as an aristocratic heroine, so the result is far from displeasing. All told, it is tin" way the story is put across that makes the picture entertaining, not the material itself. "Too Much Harmony." Bing Crosby, Judith Allen, Jack Oakie, Lilyan Tashman, Richard Gallagher, Marry Green, Kitty Kelly. Director: Edward Sutherland. The enormous, positive popularity of Bing Crosby puts over his new picture in spite of its unevenness and other faults. So what matter if little imagination has been shown by the director, or if he is said to have discarded the script written by the author and improvised his own? True, the picture might have been a hundred per cent better — and Mr. Crosby's public deserves the best — but I have heard no bitter complaints from any one and I know, too, that critics did not risk apoplexy in shouting the praises of "College Humor," yet it was a major success. So, after all, the public does decide. Anyway, the new film is distinctly pleasant and Mr. Crosby is even more so. He is pleasing to the eye, the ear, and to one's sense of good taste in acting. His pleasant awareness never becomes mere smartness, his sense of humor never gets beyond bounds, and his ease and spontaneity in singing never becomes eagerness to show off. In fact, Mr. Crosby's popularity is entirely justified and, it seems to me, can be challenged by no one. He is concerned in a story of backstage musical comedy which, while not exactly gripping, is good enough. At least it doesn't include the timeworn expedient of the chorus girl who steps into the shoes of the star and bowls every one over. Indeed. Judith Allen, as the heroine, forgets the words of her song on the opening night. Jack Oakie really has a better role than Mr. Crosby and, as usual, overlooks no opportunity to show it. His portrayal of a professional Southerner in a scene with Lilyan Tashman is immensely funny. Judith Allen is perfectly charming, even though her singing is clumsily "dubbed," and Miss Tashman does wonders in making striking her conventional role. "One Sunday Afternoon." Gary Cooper, Frances Fuller, Neil Hamilton, Fay Wray, Roscoe Karns, Sam Hardy, Jane Darwell. Director: Stephen Roberts. Unintentionally, this picture recalls the dullness of the old-fashioned Strait-laced Sabbath when recreation was thought a sin and little Rollo was slapped for smiling. From this Standpoint, it is well named for it's that kind of a Sunday afternoon. Not that it is uneventful, but it is devoid of drama and suspense. More disappointing to the majority is that Gary Cooper, miscast, plays a stupid, loutish bumpkin. Either the character, or Mr. Cooper's conception of it, robs the part of sympathy or even interest. And this from Gary! The frail story runs something like