Monday, Sep. 24, 1934

The New Pictures

Belle of the Nineties (Paramount). When almost overnight Mae West became an immensely profitable symbol of screen naughtiness by padding her hips and uttering double-entendres without moving her upper lip, Paramount officials decided that she knew what she was doing. They gave her a free hand with her pictures, under the congenial supervision of Producer William Le Baron. The completion of her third picture last June coincided precisely with the peak of cinema reform agitation by the Legion of Decency. The Hays office called its original title, It Ain't No Sin, "dangerous." The New York State Censors refused to give the picture a license. Thereupon Paramount officials in Manhattan sent the film back to Hollywood for a new title and other changes. When Belle of--New Orleans was proposed New Orleans civic organizations spluttered vehement objection. It was subsequently called St. Louis Woman, My Old Flame and several other things before Paramount chose Belle of the Nineties. Only two major changes--a hasty and unconvincing marriage at the conclusion and the removal of a sequence showing Mae West and John Miljan preparing to retire--were made before Censor Joseph Breen saw and approved the picture last August. Subsequently Belle of the Nineties passed the censor boards which the industry considers most fastidious, New York and Kansas.

While in this piece Mae West is billed merely as star and sole author, it is generally understood that she did the casting, passed on the costumes and is responsible for everything except the sound patents. She is Ruby Carter, an entertainer of the mauve decade, the idol of St. Louis and of Tiger Kid (Roger Pryor). Tiger Kid is a prizefighter until his manager frames a telephone call which makes the Tiger think Ruby is unfaithful. Abandoned by the Kid, she goes to work at the "Sensation House" in New Orleans where Ace Lamont (John Miljan) seizes her in his arms. Miljan: "Your red lips, your white skin, your soft cheeks, your blue eyes, your. . . ." West: ''Say, is this a proposal, or are you takin' inventory?"

Molly Brant (Katherine DeMille) is Ace's onetime sweetheart, who dislikes Ruby for occupying her lover's attention and is later saved by Ruby and the Kid from a fire started by Ace in the hope of destroying "Sensation House" and burning Molly alive.

No one seeing the picture will question for a moment Miss West's claim to sole authorship of the two-line vaudeville gags which serve for dialog. Typical cracks: "A man in the house is worth two on the street." "That guy's no good. His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork." "What is your favorite sport? Don't embarrass me. boys." (In front of a picture): "It's an old master, you know. . . . . It looks like an old mistress to me. . . ." "Are you here for good? Well, I'm here, but not for good."

Cecil DeMille took Katherine DeMille, who plays Molly Brant in the West picture, out of a Los Angeles orphanage when she was 9. Her father was a Canadian named Edward Lester, killed in one of the Vimy Ridge engagements. Her mother died in a Los Angeles charity hospital. As DeMille's daughter she grew up in his big house on DeMille Road, a real estate development owned by him on a hill overlooking Hollywood. She took the usual scholastic courses that interest girls with money in expensive private schools, dancing, amateur dramatics, etc. She was the brightest girl in every school she went to, including a Los Angeles business college in which she studied stenography and shorthand so as to have a foundation for other professions in case she was a failure in the film business. She studied cutting and carried script for her father. Lately she has been taking thyroid treatments and has lost 25 lb. Paramount was pleased but Mae West told her to gain weight for Belle of the Nineties. She likes to play heavies. She says that anyone can be an ingenue but to be a menace takes action. She does a lot of swimming at the Beach Club in Santa Monica and plays a little tennis. She gives the kind of parties at which people go upstairs and dress in funny clothes, then come down and do acts. She knows a lot about music and likes musicians at her parties. She joined the company of Viva Villa as an extra, got a small featured role without bothering to reveal her identity. Paramount scouts liked her work, singled her out for a long term contract before they knew her name. She refused to play in her father's Cleopatra (TIME, Aug. 27). Her next picture will be The Gilded Lily.

Desirable (Warner). The story about the actress whose grown daughter imperils her career and interrupts her romance is familiar to cinemaddicts. So is the story of the plebeian beauty who. visiting the patrician parents of her fiance, shocks them by saying "My father was a florist." Desirable combines these two stories in a program picture which contains a few well-written sequences but not enough to make it valid either as comedy or problem play. Verree Teasdale, George Brent and Jean Muir perform competently.

Judge Priest (Fox). Best shot in this picture: a tippled old juror, in the final courtroom scene, after expectorating an ample supply of tobacco juice loudly and accurately into a spittoon, describing how he contrived to hook the stream around a table leg to reach its mark.* The sot is one of the minor characters who, together with shambling, inarticulate Stepin Fetchit (TIME, March 12), supply most of the comedy relief.

As a southern circuit judge who takes mildly to Bourbon whiskey. Will Rogers, too old to be the main love interest, assumes again, as he did in Handy Andy, the role of matchmaker for younger members of the cast. Presented with dialog patterned after Irvin S. Cobb's quiet Judge Priest stories and permitted but a minimum of head-ducking. Funnyman Rogers is a less hackneyed philosopher than he was in earlier films. Time is the slow Kentucky '90s. Plot is concerned with a judge who is fond of his nephew who is fond of the pretty but poor white trash next door. Not until the courtroom scene discloses that a reticent, no-account town character named Gillis, once convicted of murder, is not only the young girl's father but also a great Confederate hero of the Civil War, do things come out the way they should. Mounted against crinolines and candy-pulling, Negro melodies and aging Civil War veterans, Judge Priest will bring many a tear and chortle to those who find this sort of 19th Century southern cooking more palatable than the fancy, suggestive pastry of Miss West in New Orleans (see col. 1).

* In Chicago last week one John A. Morrison, juror in an embezzlement trial, sucked at a whiskey bottle during the proceedings, hiccoughed all through recesses, was too drunk for coherence during the voting, had to be tubbed, caused a mistrial, was held for contempt of court, got ten days in jail.

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