The New Pictures

Men Without Women (Fox). This piece shows how men, trapped under water in a wrecked submarine, behave. The crew of the 513 comes back from shore leave, goes to sea. The 513 is sunk. They have enough air to live about five hours. At first their imminent fate is merely an unthinkable horror, remote and impersonal: it becomes human and tragic because, as time passes, in the manner in which each man faces or avoids the thought of what is coming his nature is made clear. There is Pollack who goes crazy and is shot. There is the ensign in command, a little fellow just out of Annapolis, with a pathetic courage and a dormitory sense of duty, who faces death by recalling the heroic memory of John Paul Jones. Cobb likes girls and Costello likes liquor and the radio operator is a sarcastic fellow. In the effort to keep sane under terrible pressure some minds infect themselves deliberately with tiny manias. One sailor hangs onto a Chinese vase--he wants to save that--and another whittles a boat out of a chip of wood to play with in the water that will drown him. On the plunging surface of the water up above, rescuers get to work, and one by one the members of the crew are shot out of a torpedo tube until only a single man is left, and he has a reason for staying. Men Without Women was written by Director John Ford, James McGuinness and Dudley Nichols. The title was bought from Author Ernest Hemingway.

Street of Chance (Paramount). Arnold Rothstein, famed gambler whose murder more than a year ago kept the front pages of Manhattan papers lively for months and has never been solved by the police, was a man of scrupulous habits, who paid his debts promptly, was faithful to his wife, and stooped to cheating in a card game only once and then in an effort to make an honest man of his young brother. Thus, at least, the producers of Street of Chance have worked out his character in a picture shrewdly designed to profit by still active popular interest in the murder. Rothstein, played by William Powell, is not named directly, but in general the plot follows the outlines of the real case faithfully--Lindy's restaurant on Broadway is reproduced as "Larry's," and no trouble is taken to keep the Holland House Hotel from looking like the Park Central. It is an exciting and fairly credible melodrama distinguished by Powell's fine performance. Best shot: Gambler Powell coming out of the hotel where he has been shot, bent over, staggering, with his hand pressed to his groin, while the hotel employes laugh at him as just another drunk.

William Powell was class cheerleader when he went to Central High in Kansas City. His parents wanted him to be a lawyer, but he borrowed enough money from a rich and eccentric great-aunt to take a course in the New York Academy of Dramatic Arts. When he got a bit-part in a play called The Ne'er Do Well he wrote home such glowing accounts of his success on the stage that he was reluctant to ask for help when the play was taken off. After playing one-night stands in a variety of tank towns he settled down to stock in bigger cities. He was featured in a Manhattan success, Within the Law. Six feet tall and well built, he belongs to most of the clubs an actor of his derivation is eligible for. He has been in The Bright Shawl, Too Many Kisses, Four Feathers, Pointed Heels, The Canary Murder Case, The Greene Murder Case.

The Bishop Murder Case (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). Cock Robin was the first to go. An arrow finished him. Then little Johnny Sprigg was shot in the top of his wig and Humpty Dumpty tumbled off a wall. It was Philo Vance, the amateur detective of the S. S. Van Dine mystery stories, who found the solution of the Mother Goose pattern in the series of horrible murders involving first Mr. Cochrane Robin in an archery butt, then a gentleman named Sperling, which is sparrow in German, then Mr. Sprigg, and finally a hunchback who resembled Humpty principally in the manner of his end. Footsteps, chess, English voices, higher mathematics, and the Church are used to create suspense, successfully keep your interest, and Basil Rathbone, as Vance, is pleasantly similar to William Powell, who has played the role in other pictures. Best shot: Philo Vance explaining his startling powers of deduction to dumbfounded Heath.

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