The New Pictures

The Divine Lady (First National).

When Admiral Lord Nelson created by his heroic death a stencil for millions of Victorian lithographs, he is said also to have left desolate the most beautiful woman of his time. Lady Hamilton's white face and big eyes, painted by Romney and Gainsborough, were so widely admired that her elderly husband investigated no rumored infidelities "for fear they might be true." When Nelson left her to save his country, he asked her to sing for him once more -and there now is heard, apparently issuing from the lips of Corinne Griffith, "You'll Take the High Road and I'll Take the Low." Except for such occasional bathos, and for an effective sound accompaniment of guns and waves, this picture is silent, and the Admiral's orders to his fleet ("England expects every man will do his duty") and his last words to his aide ("Kiss me, Hardy") are shown in written titles borrowed from history and from the novel by E. Barrington. Victor Varconi as a handsome Nelson, H. B. Warner as a subtle cuckold, act well in episodes of which the theatricality seems no more than appropriate treatment of an age and a hero also theatrical. Best shot: the cockpit of the thundering Victory.

Mr. and Mrs. Griffin, a Catholic couple who lived in a frame house near the railroad station of Texarkana, Tex., sent their daughter Corinne to the Sacred Heart Convent in New Orleans. When the girl, unanimously elected Queen of the Mardi Gras, went to California to work in the movies, her mother went along, let her change her name to Griffith. Now Corinne Griffith makes $500,000 a year and is said to have the most beautiful back in the world. She lives in an English house in Beverly Hills decorated in French & Italian styles. Married to Walter Morosco, son of famed Oliver Morosco, she collects jewels, is said to own the biggest existing cabuchon ruby, reads with a magnifying glass the complete works of Poet Alfred Noyes in an edition one inch square, has a prize lily garden, and plays golf badly. Famed for her roles in Outcast, Prisoners, Six Days, she sailed for Europe last week for her "first vacation in five years."

The Cohens and the Kellys in Atlantic City (Universal). Long before their shadows could speak, the Cohens and the Kellys were funny in Manhattan, in Paris. Now on the beach they promote a bathing suit business. Seeing his daughter going away with young Pat Kelly, Cohen telegraphs the Atlantic City police please they should arrest Cohen and Kelly, so the police arrest Cohen Sr. and old Mrs. Kelly arriving there to bring back young Kelly and Cohen; and then Mrs. Cohen and Papa Kelly come to jail too and Mr. Cohen is so crazy-acting they padlock him alongside an ugly crook. It would be much funnier cut to two reels and without its terrible subtitles. Best shot: Cohen trying to get his wallet away from a dog.

Mons (British) is a news-story of the retreat of the English Army, known to their opponents as "The Contemptibles," from Mons to the Marne. Lacking the realism of such War pictures as Gold Chevrons, and Behind the German Lines, parts of which were taken in battle, its photographic effectiveness does not make up for conventional directing and for the stressing of isolated episodes at the expense of the main narrative. Maps might have given a sense of the unseen enemy pushing back the actual army, now dead, of which these actors are the equivalents. As it is, the soldiers remain stage soldiers, and while the incidents involving them are undoubtedly taken from history, they are not generalized enough to suggest the sound and terror of that retreat or to make war as real as Hollywood directors often made it when military pictures were the commercial vogue. Best shot: an officer waking up his tired company with a drum he has taken from the window of a deserted toy-store.