Silver Screen (Feb-Oct 1935)

Silver Screen for October 1935 55 Frances Langford, Alice Faye and Patsy Kelly who appear in "Every Night at Eight," as a radio trio. cause it's the smart thing to like right now. Of course, with all kinds of rip-snorting action going on there isn't much time for character motivation, but I'm sure you won't mind. Gable and Harlow and Beery are all three sensational— and, furthermore, it's a moving moving picture. WE'RE IN THE MONEY Rating 720— Fast Comedy— Warners HERE'S a cure for whatever ails you, heat, blues, or a little rash. Joan Blondell and Glenda Farrell play a couple of hard-boiled process servers, employed by that utterly irresponsible and absentminded attorney-at-law, Hugh Herbert. Of course, Joan has fallen in love with a rich young man, Ross Alexander, whom she thinks is a chauffeur, and of course she later discovers to her horror that he is the millionaire clubman she is trying to serve with a summons to appear in a million dollar heart-balm suit. But she serves the summons— and gets thrown in the ocean. She also serves summons on Phil Regan, night club singer, Man Mountain Dean, wrestler, and Lionel Stander, tough restaurant manager, and how she and Glenda accomplish all this is excellent comedy. Hugh Herbert goes through his antics and is funnier than ever, particularly in his court-room scene. For the good old hearty laughs, see this one. BONNIE SCOTLAND Rating: 700— Laurel and Hardy Roach-M-G-M THOSE two funny guys, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, are here again in a feature length picture with some very good comedy and some very bad plot. In fact Laurel and Hardy don't need the plot at all, they are as funny as fly-paper without it. In the first part of the picture the two boys arrive in Scotland to investigate Stanley MacLaurel's inheritance from a Scottish ancestor— which, of course, is nothing and they are stranded there. Stan burns Oliver's single pair of pants and the next thing you know the boys have become a couple of kilted Highlanders in the British army. This leads to India, where they treat you to a fine travesty on "Bengal Lancers" which will have you rolling in the aisles. You mustn't miss it. The plot's a little something about a poor but honest lad in love with an heiress, but it doesn't matter, and may even be cut out before you see it. What does matter is Laurel and Hardy. They've never been quite so funny before. BRIGHT LIGHTS Rating: 510— What-a-mouth Brown's Here— Warners TOE E. BROWN comedies are always good " family entertainment— unless your family harbors a sophisticate— and this picture is no exception. There are plenty of gags and a lot of good clean fun. Joe plays a small town burlesque comic who, with his wife, Ann Dvorak, goes over big in the sticks. All is well until Patricia Ellis, a snooty society gal, gets bored and runs away from home to take a flier in vaudeville. You know how those society dames are— always muscling in. Well, Joe, of course, falls for Patricia, the sap, and with her beauty and conniving they make Broadway. He's wasting away in the throes of l'amour when he discovers that Pat is in love with William Gargan and has been giving him the runaround just for the laughs. He makes it up with Ann, and there's a happy ending. Distinctly one of the best Joe E. Brown comedies. STEAMBOAT ROUND THE BEND Rating 76°— Way Down South in Dixie -Fox BEING a daughter of the Southland with magnolias in my hair I fell for this bit of Old South folklore hook, line and sinker, and so will everybody with a drop of Southern blood. And somehow, ma'am, I think you Yankees are gonna fall for it too. It's a comedy of the nineties with the Mississippi River around Baton Rouge, Louisiana, as the locale. Will Rogers plays the captain of one of the worst old tubs that ever sailed around the bend. He has been counting on his nephew, John McGuire, to pilot the boat for him, but John has fallen in love with a swamp girl, Anne Shirley, and, trying to defend her from a drunken brute he in advertently kills the man in self defense. So John is arrested by Sheriff Eugene Pallette, and in time is sentenced to be hanged. Anne and Will are convinced that they can save John if they can find the only eye witness to the killing, who happens to be the New Moses, one of the grandest characters you've ever seen on the screen. So they scour the Mississippi river banks looking for the New Moses conducting his baptisms. How they find him, and how they become involved in the famous river races —and win, by heck— is the most fun you've seen on the screen for many a weary night. Irvin S. Cobb, as the rival river captain who loses the race to Will, is simply superb —what a face! Berton Churchill plays the New Moses and is grand, and so is Step'n Fetchit. I've seen races in my time but never one quite so funny as this one. THE RETURN OF PETER GRIMM Rating: 640— A Bit of the Supernatural— RKO SOME thirty years ago (Oh, don't think I remember it, puleeze) this was a most successful stage play, produced by the wizard David Belasco, and acted by David Warfield, and it ran for years and years and people went crazy about it. Peter Grimm returns from the dead once more, and whether you'll go crazy about it is something you'll decide for yourself. This time Lionel Barrymore plays the crabbed, tyrannical, and humorous Dutch nurseryman who refuses to believe in spiritualism. His doctor and pal, Edward Ellis, is positive that spirits return to the earth after death. So the two old men make a bet with each other that the one who dies first will return and apologize to the other. Barrymore dies, and returns to the earth to find all his affairs in a grand mess, but the humor of it all is that he cannot convey a message to the doctor. Finally through a little adopted boy, who is dying, he finds a medium of communication, and manages to straighten out his tangled affairs. Too much praise cannot be given to the director and the cameraman, for they have managed to create just enough of the eerie and the supernatural, and Peter Grimm's return to the earth as a ghost is excellently done. Barrymore is quite the nicest Sybil Jason, one more child wonder. She is in "Little Big Shot."