The New Pictures

Chu Chin Chow (Gaumont-British). In the last two years the cinema industry in Britain has expanded almost as rapidly as it did in the U. S. before Depression. Douglas Fairbanks (whose Private Life of Don Juan had its London premiere last month), Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Gregory Ratoff, are a few of the Hollywood celebrities who are making pictures in England. Last week John Barrymore signed a contract with London Film Productions, Ltd. to act in an adaptation of a Shakespeare play, directed by Alexander Korda (The Private Life of Henry VIII). Most potent of British producing companies. which are currently paying 25% higher salaries than Hollywood, is Gaumont-British. Last week this concern announced its plans to invade the U. S. market by supplementing its distribution contracts with Fox with its own sales staff in 31 U. S. cities. And Gaumont-British Picture Corporation, Ltd. was reported to be negotiating the purchase of Manhattan's huge Roxy Theatre, now in the hands of receivers. At the Roxy last week opened the first of eight Gaumont-British features to be presented to U. S. audiences in the next two months.

Unlike most importations, Gaumont-British's version of the comic operetta which ran at His Majesty's Theatre in London from 1915 to 1920, in Manhattan from 1917 to 1919, is at least intelligible to U. S. cinemaddicts. Its actors muffle their accents, sing with no more affectation than U. S. musicomedy performers. Prepared without either the gross exaggerations of a DeMille or the onyx convolutions of a Busby Berkeley, Chu Chin Chow is elaborate without being absurd. It relates the story of Ali Baba (George Robey) and the 40 thieves, exhibits the misfortunes which overtake the head thief Abu Hasan (Fritz Kortner) when he inflicts unjust punishment on his favorite dancing girl (Anna May Wong). Interspersed with songs, dances, oriental feasts and samples of British comic opera jocosity, it requires almost two hours for the thieves to reach their bath of boiling oil. U. S. cinemaddicts may find the photography in Chu Chin Chow inferior to most recent Hollywood musicomedies, its narrative method stodgy, but are likely to approve the decor, Frederic Norton's music, the acting of the only performer in the cast whose name is familiar to them. Anna May Wong wriggles her eyebrows ably when placed on the slave auction-block, writhes in splendid style when compelled to turn the winch that opens the door of the robbers' cave.

Daughter of a Chinese laundryman named Sam Sing Tsong, Anna May Wong's real name is Wong Liu Tsong (Frosted Yellow Willows). She grew up on Flower Street in Los Angeles' chop-suey section, attended Los Angeles Central High School. Her ambition to become an actress sprouted when she caught sight of the late Alma Rubens in an elevator. Sam Sing Tsong objected when his daughter got extra jobs on location scenes in Chinatown. Was it not true that every time a picture is taken, its subject loses part of his soul? Nonetheless, Anna May Wong carried a tea tray for Sessue Hayakawa, did a bit in a Lon Chancy picture, played in a Hal Roach two-reeler, acted with Douglas Fairbanks in The Thief of Bagdad. She got an even better chance to exhibit her ability in a German picture called--but not in her honor--Tsong, Tsong (1928) was widely successful, made Anna May Wong a celebrity in Europe and especially in London where her social prestige still exceeds that of any other cinema performer.

Criticized for her U. S. accent, Anna May Wrong paid an Oxford tutor -L-200 to teach her his. Her vogue in London made her a featured player when she returned to the U. S. in 1930. Since then she has acted in a Broadway play, performed in Daughter of the Dragon, and Shanghai Express, sung in a London night club, made three British pictures, toured the British Isles in a song revue. Now in Hollywood, her next picture will be Limehouse Nights.

The Richest Girl in the World (RKO). Dorothy Hunter (Miriam Hopkins) is a girl of fabulous wealth whose upbringing has been so secluded that no newspaper morgue contains a picture of her since infancy. This makes it easy for her to insure her privacy by impersonating her private secretary (Fay Wray), having her secretary impersonate Dorothy Hunter. When the young man Dorothy loves (Joel McCrea) appears, one deception leads to another. To make sure that the young man cares for her and not the Hunter fortune, Dorothy encourages him to make love to the secretary. Equipped with more common sense than perspicacity, he does so until the combination of a week-end in the Adirondacks, a bowl of hot punch and the secretary's husband prod him into a proper proposal of marriage.

Eighteen years ago, Mary Pickford made her admirers weep with Poor Little Rich Girl. The Richest Girl in the World, an adult variation of the same theme, keeps its tongue in its cheek. It is a charming, energetic comedy, which should please the majority of cinemaddicts and offend no one except the Huttons and Prince Mdivani.

The Last Gentleman (Twentieth Century). For crotchety old Cabot Barr (George Arliss) life in his Barrville manor house is not all beer and skittles. His collection of 106 clocks, his fancy for stuffed peacocks on his lawn, annoy his son Judd (Donald Meek), a small, bald, middle-aged lowlife. The Barrs--son, daughter, two daughters-in-law, granddaughter and adopted grandson--are introduced in The Last Gentleman at a family memorial service for a deceased niece which Cabot Barr arranges because he is not, he says, "the sort of man who gives Christmas parties." They reassemble at Cabot Barrs summer camp, where he hopes his granddaughter and adopted grandson will reach an understanding.

During the sojourn at the summer camp, a tragic event occurs. Bad Judd Barr arrives with an alienist. He has written down the details of his father's idiosyncrasies in a little notebook and he now proposes to have Cabot Barr declared incompetent. It takes Cabot Barr no more than five minutes to prove to the alienist that if anyone is incompetent it must be Judd. Nonetheless, the treachery of his son is more than the old man can bear and he is presently hobbling upstairs toward a sick bed. Up to this point The Last Gentleman seems pointed at a deathbed finish. It contains, instead, a sequence in which the administrator of Cabot Barr's estate runs off a homemade moving picture of the old man taking sentimental leave of his kinsfolk after distributing his property according to their just deserts.

In real life, Cabot Barr would be properly described as a superannuated martinet, tedious, ill-mannered and rotten with conceit. On the screen George Arliss makes him a lovable eccentric, whose crotchets seem more charming than malicious. Cinemaddicts who can enjoy a sentimental caricature even when it pretends to be a portrait should like The Last Gentleman. Although, like most Arliss pictures, it often resembles a monolog, his is not the only virtuous performance in it. Charlotte Henry, in her first role since Alice in Wonderland (TIME, Dec. 25), is fat and natural as little Granddaughter Marjorie Barr. Joseph Cawthorn makes his tiny part produce one of the funniest moments in the picture. He is the minister who, while presiding at the Barr memorial service, tries to maintain his dignity while muffling a bad cold.

The Barretts of Wimpole Street (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). The story of Elizabeth Barrett (Norma Shearer) who, bedridden for a year and presumably dying, is brought back to life and initiated into romance by vital young Robert Browning (Fredric March), would seem at casual glance to be perfect film material. However, in the play by Rudolf Besier, this story presented difficulties. Besier suggests that the reason Elizabeth Barrett's father opposed her marriage to Browning was incestuous desire. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer solves this difficulty by having Father Barrett played by Charles Laughton, who can always leave the unspeakable unspoken. In the handling of an elaborately literary stage piece the cinema producers are less successful. There are big chunks of dialog which, in spite of all Norma Shearer, Fredric March, and Director Sidney Franklin can do, remain just talk. The adapters, instead of squeezing in the accordion folds of the play, have pulled them out, injected a number of scenes which pad the continuity but add nothing to the plot.

Norma Shearer cannot make her sincerity and intelligence compensate for an incorrigible good health. When she staggers toward her bedroom door the audience will find it hard to believe she is an invalid poetess. But nothing can spoil the best scenes of the play: Father Barrett making Elizabeth drink the tankard of porter; Elizabeth getting out of bed for the first time; Elizabeth making Browning explain his poetry to her.

The Count of Monte Cristo (Reliance). If Alexandre Dumas were alive today, he would doubtless be one of Hollywood's highest paid scenarists. Since he is not, it is surprising that more of his works have not been copied or adapted for the cinema. The Count of Monte Cristo is one of two productions on the current schedule of a two-year-old Hollywood company which plans to make feature pictures retail instead of wholesale. It is a first-rate translation of one of Dumas' most picturesque stories. In it, a handsome, blond British actor named Robert Donat appears as Dantes, the French officer who, unjustly imprisoned in a dungeon, escapes to find buried treasure on a desert island and returns to outsmart his persecutors. Elissa Landi is Mercedes who, although forced into an unwelcome marriage when her lover goes to jail, remains sufficiently faithful, after her husband dies, to marry her inamorato when he returns. Good shot: the Abbe Faria (O. P. Heggie) suddenly poking his head through a tunnel and discovering Dantes' cell.

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