The New Pictures

Not Quite Decent (Fox). Probably the ablest of cinemothers, Louise Dresser, tries hard and resourcefully to keep her daughter away from a no-good fellow. Dimpled June Collyer does not know that Miss Dresser is her mother at all. This is not surprising because daughter and mother have not seen each other since the one's babyhood and the other's flaming youth. Also, because the mother, as a nightclub hostess, is in mulatto makeup much of the time. Because the story, de pending mostly on character, is a strong one, because the background is unusually well directed, the picture is worth seeing in spite of several long, slow dialog sequences. Best shot: Miss Dresser making the no-good slap her face to impress her daughter.

It was once rumored that Louise Dresser was the sister of Novelist Theodore Dreiser. Dreiser had a brother, Paul, who changed his name to Dresser and gained fame by writing songs ("On the Banks of the Wabash," "My Gal Sal"). Paul Dresser, not Theodore Dreiser, was the friend, not the brother, of Louise. He knew her at a time when he was selling candy on a train which ran through Indiana. Louise, nee Kerlin, came to the station to meet her father who was a conductor on the same train. Conductor Kerlin was killed in a railroad wreck; Louise brought up her younger brothers and sisters. Dresser's songs had had some success and he helped her to a job in vaudeville, let her use his name. Later she sang with Weber & Fields, Raymond Hitchcock, William Collier; played parent roles in many pictures, notably Mother Knows Best.

Betrayal (Paramount). Rendered ineligible for U. S. talkies by his thick German accent, Emil Jannings left Hollywood last week.* His last U. S. picture, this one about a Swiss burgomeister and his wife, is in some ways his best. The burgomeister has two little sons. He finds out after his wife's death that one of them was fathered by someone else. After thinking about it until his mind accepts as sensible the suggestions put into it by frustrated instincts, he works out a scheme for getting rid of the son who is not his. The camera does not go into his mind but the action does. He and his son climb up a mountain. ... In the end Jannings does not put his scheme into practice; the interior struggle has been decided another way. You may take exception to the scene on the mountain and to one or two others in which superficial events have been slightly diverted as concessions to what is believed to be popular taste. You cannot take exception to Jannings' acting. He does a thousand things that only someone who knew a lot could think of, showing you how life worked out for that burgomeister. The picture itself is silent, but a musical accompaniment adds to its beauty. It was written by two Russians, Victor Schertzinger and Nicholas Soussanin. Best shots: the dance in the village hall, the toboggan slide, the boys who don't like birthday cake, Jannings wiping his tears on his dead wife's chemise, a nun in the village hospital, the moment on the stairs when the idea of getting even upsets reason for the burgomeister.

Bulldog Drummond (Samuel Goldwyn). Another all-talking photograph of an old play is kept from being all talk by the intelligent acting of Ronald Colman. What does the bored British officer with the poetic eyes and the little mustache do when the gang catches him? Does he fight his way out for the sake of the lovely girl whose uncle is held captive in a house where anything might happen? You are quite safe in feeling assured that in all circumstances such an officer will behave as gallantry prescribes. Best shot: the effect of the fall of a spoon in the dining room of the English Club.

Desert Nights (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). Bigger than the Sahara or than the sandy bottoms of all the oceans in the world is the desert of John Gilbert's new picture. It is the Great Film Desert across which, since the beginning of cinema, thirsty actors have tottered carrying beautiful women.

Two diamond thieves, one of them a woman, and the kidnaped manager of the Crown Diamond mines, get thirsty in an oxcart. Suspense, provided by the problem of how Gilbert is to get both diamonds and woman, gathers smoothly and almost originally, until the star embraces Mary Nolan in the mine office and Ernest Torrence is led off to jail. Best shot: Torrence lulling the suspicions of the mine employes when a steam-alarm goes off as he is robbing the safe.

Born in Logan, Utah, in 1895, John Gilbert left the traveling stock company of his mother (Ida Adair) for a Califor nia military academy, then dusted desks in a rubber company's western office until his ramrod bearing and bright eye got him jobs as a film extra. Becoming famed in The Big Parade, he played in a series of films with Greta Garbo. Known, like half a dozen other actors, as the "screen's greatest lover," he had been married twice before -- once to a girl who sang songs at a training camp where he was stationed, once to Actress Leatrice Joy by whom he has a daughter.

Last week, in Las Vegas, Nev., his photograph was taken standing in a fond attitude in front of a clergyman with Act ress Ina Claire (nee Fagan). Once glorified by Florenz Ziegfeld, later an able comedienne, she had gone to Hollywood three weeks before to make a picture.

Miss Claire: "This is the happiest day of my life. . . ."

Mr. Gilbert: "I am the proudest man in the world. . . ."

Amazed friends who had believed Miss Claire engaged to Scenario-writer Gene Markey, and who had taken seriously Mr. Gilbert's avowals against further matrimony, accepted the announced wedding at face value.

*Born in Brooklyn in 1886, Jannings went to live in Germany before he could talk English.