The New Pictures

No More Ladies (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) shows Joan Crawford, Robert Montgomery and Franchot Tone, a variety of white chromium modernistic interiors, a welter of cynical badinage over cocktails and cigarets, the complications of rich idle adultery. It is a pleasant, witty time-waster.

Joan Crawford's big-boned, over-dieted frame, breezing in & out of clothes, has the appeal of cold turkey. Her laborious refinement and sincerity are expertly relieved by the acidities of Edna May Oliver. The plot: Robert Montgomery, non-marrying lady-killer, is talked into marrying Joan Crawford. Because he cannot stop lady-killing, Joan piously makes him an apparent cuckold in public. This reforms him and, in what passes for high breeding in Hollywood, these two snarl, mutter, sneer, whine, shout their love at one another.

Alibi Ike (Warner). Joe E. Brown had a good time making this picture. Its baseball background harks back to the time when he was given a tryout with the New York Yankees. He still plays whenever he can. He owns a piece of the Kansas City Blues (American Association) and is now reported dickering with Judge Emil Fuchs for a sharehold in the Boston Braves.

Alibi Ike, considerably adapted, is the Ring Lardner pitcher who could never give a straight question a straight answer. Particularly oblique is Ike when questions bear on his sentiments for Dolly (Olivia de Havilland). It is not the wiles of Crooked Gamblers but depression over a spat with Dolly, who has heard him alibying their engagement, that makes him lose the ball game. Nobody believes him until he steals an ambulance in which his enemies have kidnapped him and gets to the ball park in time to win another.

The Glass Key (Paramount) is a figure of speech employed by Ed Beaumont (George Rait) to predict the situation in which his political boss, Paul Madvig (Edward Arnold), will find himself if he continues to dress up in silk hat and cane, trade his power for the daughter of a re-form Senator seeking reelection. Sleek, sardonic, imperturbable, Ed Beaumont follows Opal Madvig, Paul's daughter, to a midnight rendezvous with Taylor Henry, son of the Senator, gives the youth a kick in the shin and takes Opal home. Later, grimly stalking the streets, he finds Taylor Henry's body in the gutter. Paul Madvig is accused of murder. Ed Beaumont arranges to have himself invited into the camp of Madvig's enemy, Shad O'Rory, has a hard time getting out. But back he goes, once patched up, calmly watches Shad O'Rory being choked to death.

Director Frank Tuttle uses Dashiell Hammett's trick of understatement, builds his picture to unbearable suspense in the scene in which Beaumont, battered, bleeding, crawls from the bed on which Shad O'Rory's henchmen have thrown him, starts a fire in the mattress, tumbles 20 feet out a window, drags himself to safety.

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