The New Pictures
Firemen, policemen and locomotive engineers are no longer treated in the cinema as heroes. Modern cinema depicts careers of more sophisticated daring, careers of ruffians, lawyers, filles de joie, doctors. Last year reporters were popular because they are considered dissolute and apt at repartee. This year, Broadway colyumists are even more popular for the same reasons. No fewer than three pictures about colyumists appeared last week, with more in prospect.
Love is a Racket (First National) shows Douglas Fairbanks Jr., a likable young journalist, attempting to make friends with a young actress (Frances Dee). When, during a penthouse entertainment, a racketeer insults the actress, her aunt immediately kills him. Douglas Fairbanks Jr. shows how quick-witted he is by throwing the racketeer's corpse off the roof. When police find it on the sidewalk, they do not guess about the murder. He is rewarded not by the actress's devotion but by a mean trick such as real colyumists have given the public to understand is particularly likely to occur in Manhattan's theatre district. The actress marries someone else and the colyumist is forced to fall back upon the affections of a platonic friend who laughs at all his wisecracks (Ann Dvorak).
It must be hard for her to do so, for the cracks are not very funny. "Hungry as a toothless timberwolf" is a simile he tosses off while talking about love. Adapted from a novel by Brooklyn Colyumist Rian James, Love is a Racket is brightly acted, particularly by Lee Tracy as a reporter who is always somewhat agitated. It contains a few genuine shots of its metier, including one of Author James's favorite chophouse.
Is My Face Red? (RKO) takes a somewhat less complaisant view of colyumists. Its hero (Ricardo Cortez) is an impudent, conceited hack, perpetually touching pitch. "I am a mirror reflecting the spirit of the times," he says, and later: "I am the guy who made Broadway famous." He has a girl (Helen Twelvetrees) but he is careless of her feelings and takes up with a richer one (Jill Esmond). Presently he writes for his colyum a description of a murder before the police have found the corpse. This causes an indignant Sicilian to crawl into his office and shoot him in the ribs. When he revives in a hospital, the colyumist is unchastened but embarrassed by his accident. Judged by his jokes and witty sayings, Ricardo Cortez is a slightly better colyumist than Douglas Fairbanks Jr., but still not very good. "Drop in some day," he says, "we'll drink it over."
After seeing Is My Face Red? and Love is a Racket, audiences may have been amused by studying colyumists pro & con. If the subject has obsessed them, they can go further and see:
Merrily We Go to Hell (Paramount). This is about a colyumist (Fredric March) who differs from the other two because he has a home and is not much concerned with murdered racketeers. He marries the daughter (Sylvia Sidney) of a packing millionaire, after meeting her behind a row of bottles at a penthouse. He grieves her by getting drunk inopportunely. He is drunk when they meet, drunk at her announcement party, slightly addled for their wedding, in a partial stupor on the night that his play, a "satiric comedy" in Restoration costume, has its premiere. "Merrily we go to hell," he says on such occasions. When March takes up with his leading lady, with whom he had been infatuated before his marriage, Sylvia Sidney sees that there is only one thing to do. She takes to the bottle also. This has a bad effect. Not until she is critically ill in a maternity hospital and calling for her husband are there signs that their marriage may turn out well.
In Merrily We Go to Hell, the fact that the hero is a journalist is incidental to the plot. The picture, adapted from Cleo Lucas' novel I, Jerry, Take Thee, Joan, is a study of domestic relations rather than of an occupation. As such it is by no means novel but it is well plotted, brilliantly acted. Sylvia Sidney has an extraordinary way of making audiences believe that she is ecstatically happy. She does it with a thoughtful, crooked smile and a small chuckle. Her pleasant state of mind is credible in this picture even when March, who has lost the wedding ring, slips his bottle-opener around her finger
New Morals For Old (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). One thing that helps this picture is the nonchalance with which the characters in it betray the Hays code. The daughter (Margaret Perry) of a respectable household attaches the affections of a married man. Instead of disowning her, her father (Lewis Stone) tries to be helpful. The girl's brother (Robert Young) goes to Paris to study art, leaving his mother (Laura Hope Crews) to pine and die. There are no penalties herein attached to inconsiderateness and immorality. The girl weds her lover tardily divorced-and bears him twins. Her brother, failing as a painter, becomes a contented wallpaper designer.
The Dark Horse (Warner) is the cinema's first travesty on affairs of state. Less savage than farcical, it show's how an addle-headed bumpkin is nominated for Governor and elected after losing his clothes in a game of strip-poker.
The story opens at a convention whose delegates have been forced into the sorry compromise of casting their ballots for a man named Hicks. His only recommendation lies in the fact that no one knows anything about him. As soon as the preternatural stupidity of Hicks becomes apparent, his committeemen perceive the necessity of hiring someone to promote his candidacy and to disguise his most obvious disqualifications. They find a campaign manager named Hal Blake (Warren William ) lodged in an alimony jail. "Hicks from the sticks" is the slogan which Blake invents; he approves when Hicks replies to reporters' questions by saying, "Yes&$151;and again, no." The main difficulty in electing Hicks is furnished by Blake's divorced wife. Bribed to do so by the opposition, she inveigles Hicks into a mountain cabin and wins his clothes at cards. Blake & associates arrive in time to prevent Candidate Hicks from being publicly shamed by this crucial buffoonery. Adapted by Courtenay Terrett and the late Joseph Jackson from an anonymous story, The Dark Horse is novel, funny. Good shot: Hicks, when he has memorized one of President Lincoln's speeches to use in a debate, listening to his opponent deliver the same speech.
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