The New Pictures

Sons of the Desert (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) shows Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy behaving foolishly as members of an idiotic secret order. Fat supercilious Hardy sneaks off to the Chicago convention of the Sons of the Desert by telling his wife (Mae Busch) he is going to Honolulu for his nerves. Laurel, scratching his whisk-broom forelock, accompanies him. On their return, there is confusion because the steamer from Honolulu, on which their wives expected them, has been wrecked. Laurel & Hardy cope with the situation ignominiously, Hardy with a feeble lie, Laurel with a blubbering confession.

What distinguishes Sons of the Desert from other Laurel & Hardy comedies is less its plot than the presence in the cast of Charley Chase, a lanky, glib comedian with a mouse-paw mustache and a moron's chuckle. Appearing at the Chicago convention as a Son of the Desert from Texas, Charley Chase greets Laurel & Hardy when they arrive from California by whacking them with a paddle. He invites them to his table and puts in a long distance call for his sister in Los Angeles. who turns out to be Hardy's wife. Stupid Charley Chase does not know that he has nearly precipitated a domestic crisis. He plants a fat wallet on the floor, continues to paddle arriving Sons of the Desert when they stoop to pick it up. This trick he considers a "darb." In Sons of the Desert, Charley Chase makes his first appearance in a full length picture. His role shows him to less advantage than the series of two-reel Hal Roach comedies which, since 1930, have made him one of Hollywood's most famed funnymen. Charley Chase's value, like that of most cinema comedians, is his appearance. He is a pale, clerical, common place individual whose manners should match his unobtrusive looks. Instead, he is equipped with preposterous permanent jitters. He produces laughter founded largely upon disapproval. His favorite antic is grinning self-assurance after some display of crass social ignorance.

Charley Chase has been in the cinema since 1912, when he made his first picture for Universal. He was $5-per-day extra for Keystone, before he became a Keystone director, an actor for Hal Roach in 1925. As officious offscreen as on, Chase writes and directs his own two-reel comedies. He planned and helped build his own bungalow in Hollywood. His hair, which photographs black, is as grey as Charlie Chaplin's. He dresses foppishly, plays seven musical instruments, currently receives more fan mail than any other comedian in cinema.

By Candlelight (Universal). Viennese Prince Alfred von Rommer (Nils Asther) is a sleek seducer whose routine usually gets under way in the warm glow of two candelabra. This requires the assistance of his manservant Josef (Paul Lukas) who, when he hears his master playing "I Kiss Your Hand, Madame" to a lady, knows it is time to cut off the lights, bring in the candelabra and apologize for a blown-out fuse. During such a scene with a handsome singer (Esther Ralston) an angry husband bangs his way in upon Prince Alfred's philanderings. When the singer escapes, the Prince decides to retreat temporarily to his villa in Monte Carlo. He sends Josef ahead with his crested luggage. On the train Josef meets a lady's maid named Marie (Elissa Landi) who is also traveling with crested luggage. Each mistakes the other's social position. In Monte Carlo Josef yearns for Marie, invites her over when his employer is out. In she flounces in her mistress's gown, squeals "Whatever mahst you think ahv me!," shows little of the high class lady's precipitousness toward adultery. Even the unexpected arrival of Prince Alfred, his polite donning of Josef's brass buttons and his performance of the candelabra ritual serve only to embarrass Josef and frighten Marie. In the end the Prince has met Marie's mistress, Josef has done his master a good turn, and candlelight is indicated for both parlor and pantry. Good shot: Josef posing as the Prince, looking unhappy when the Prince's telephone rings, brightening when Marie suggests he answer it as the Prince's servant.

Smoky (Fox Film), based on the best-selling romance by Cowboy Artist-Author Will James, traces a mustang's career in sentimental detail. In this unusual Western, the horse is the protagonist, the cowboy deus ex machina to save him from the glue-factory in the end. Even the love interest centres on Smoky. Critical of the first sketches the rancher's arty daughter makes of his horse, the cowboy finally succumbs when she produces a good statue.

A drawling commentary by Will James, interrupted by occasional dialog between human characters, accompanies the career of Smoky, a range-loving mustang who becomes leader of his herd by outfacing a mountain lion. After being trained to the saddle by broncho-busting Clint (Victor Jory), Smoky is stolen and beaten by a cowhand he once threw. At length he stamps his captor to death, heads for the open range. Clint gives him up for lost, goes away to be a meatpacker. Captured, Smoky becomes successively a rodeo broncho, a riding horse, a junkman's nag. Just as he ambles into a slaughterhouse he is found again by Clint and shipped back to the range. After the rodeo scenes Smoky loses its legitimate interest as an equine biography. Best performance is that of the camera man, who worked part of the time in Arizona cow country, posed his mustang hero against a sun-drenched panorama of hills and prairie. Good shot: Smoky causing a stampede when he returns to the herd after hobnobbing with his first skunk.

Gallant Lady (20th Century) registers once more Hollywood's conviction that Ann Harding finds it difficult to reconcile her love life with a career. Since she divorced Harry Bannister two years ago because he was "becoming a background for my activities and looked upon as 'Ann Harding's husband,' " her producers have persistently set her to exploring marital problems of the day. Gallant Lady, a courteous description of a self-consciously noble character, catches up themes familiar to her recent pictures. Instead of the lovelorn plastic surgeon in The Right to Romance, blonde Actress Harding this time is an arty and lovelorn lady named Sally Wyndham who after a tragic love affair gives up her baby, goes to Italy as an interior decorator's agent to forget. There she packs up the Renaissance chapel of the Carnini family for a U. S. client, turns homeward, followed by Count Mario Carnini (Tullio Carminati). In a Paris hotel she accidentally stumbles on her son Deedy (Dickie Moore), decides that she wants him back. She gets a job redecorating the home of his guardian Phillip Lawrence (Otto Kruger), sets out to replace his fiancee (Betty Lawford), who slinks through the story sneering at one & all. Innocently she eggs her son into spilling a bucket of fresh fish over the fiancee's dress, finally trades Count Mario for her son's guardian. Good sequence: Ann Harding watching her first lover take off on a flight to Bagdad which ends in a fatal crash a few seconds after the picture starts.

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