The New Pictures

In Person (RKO), Ginger Rogers' first starring picture, presents her as an "agoraphobe."* A cinema star, she fears crowds as a result of having been mobbed during a personal appearance. Secluding herself with a psychiatrist, she goes out only at his urging, and then in heavy disguise. It is on one of her therapeutic excursions that Miss Rogers meets the nephew (George Brent) of a friend of the psychiatrist. After some involved negotiations, she accompanies Brent on his vacation at a mountain snuggery, the theory of all concerned being that in her ugly make-up the cinemactress would be safe with any man. Soon after Brent has seen her not only minus the disguise but minus most of her clothing. Miss Rogers begins to cure herself. Stung by Brent's superciliousness toward actresses, she takes him to see one of her pictures in a village cinema, makes an enthusiastic personal appearance before she realizes her phobia is gone. Remarkable sight: Miss Rogers in black wig, spectacles, false teeth, which make her so thoroughly unattractive that RKO's publicity department forebore to release "stills"' of her thus disguised.

Bar-20 Rides Again (Paramount) is the third in a series of six Westerns to be released at two-month intervals. Its hero, famed in cowboy lore, is Hopalong Cassidy, created and kept alive in a score of Western books by Clarence E. Mulford. In this one Cassidy (William Boyd) is summoned by Jim Arnold of the S V Ranch to clean up a gang of rustlers. Cassidy brings along Johnny Nelson and Red Connors of Bar-20, plays a lone hand himself. Posing as a Texas gambler, he finds the gang's hideout, discovers that its leader is a cold-eyed Easterner who has been paying attention to Jim Arnold's daughter. Fast, well photographed by Archie Stout, Bar-20 Rides Again is the best of its series (others: Hopalong Cassidy, Eagle's Brood), should prove eminently acceptable not only to U. S. youngsters but also to older folk who regard horse operas as topnotch entertainment. Second only to the works of Zane Grey, the Hopalong Cassidy series have sold 1,500,000 copies in the U. S., have been translated into German, Polish, Spanish, the Scandinavian. Clarence Edward Mulford published his first Western in 1907 when he was a city clerk in Borough Hall. Brooklyn. Seventeen years later he took his first trip West, to have a look at the locale he had been writing about. When, about six years ago, his royalties became sizable, Author Mulford bought a house in Fryeburg, Me., threw away his white shirts & collars, settled down to write and have fun. On the Trail of the Tumbling T last autumn made his 25th book.

Author Mulford has his fun adding to one of the world's best libraries on Western Americana, building models, playing with firearms. His models of stage-coaches, covered wagons, river steamboats, frontier flatboats are considered marvels of authenticity. His ship Constitution, fashioned according to plans obtained from the Government, has cannon that shoot small powder loads. Currently, Mr. Mulford is looking forward to a brace of revolvers being built for him by Colt, of a special steel which will allow such great chamber pressure that marksmanship will be practical at 500 yds. Lovingly he recalls that he gave Hopalong Cassidy an old 50-calibre Army Sharp as his first rifle. Later Hopalong got a "Sharp Special 45-120-550, known as the Buffalo Sharp with the ten-pound barrel. It weighed 17 Ib. but Hopalong let his horse worry about that." The Great Impersonation (Universal) is a lively spy show, based on a novel written shortly after the War by E. Phillips Oppenheim but shrewdly denatured to coincide with current opinion. Its villains are not the German spies whom Oppenheim set to weaving plots; they are those most unpopular "men of no nation," the munitions makers. Laid in 1914, the picture represents the munitioneers as working to prolong the War by weakening England at the start. This involves nothing less than blowing up the nation's munitions plants at a signal sent by a mysteriously elaborate radio contraption in an ancient country house. Essential to the success of this is ''The Great Impersonation" performed by Edmund Lowe who plays two roles--an Englishman and an Austrian. When Lowe goes to England and the country house, where his reputation is that of a wastrel, he finds not only a spate of spying to be done but also a wife (Valerie Hobson) to be rescued from a neurosis fostered by an old woman who accuses Lowe of having murdered her son in the nearby Black Bog. Though Lowe appears to be on the unpatriotic side in the spying game, most spectators will sympathize with him in maneuvers which take considerable gunplay to wind up. Good sound: shrieks from the Black Bog. Good shot: the Black Bog, ringed by flames, yielding its secret. Your Uncle Dudley (Twentieth Century-Fox). This time Edward Everett Morton's harassments include a widowed sister-in-law (Marjorie Gateson) who lives with him because he has put her $5,000 death benefit into his paint & varnish factory; his niece, who has operatic possibilities; his secretary (Lois Wilson), whom he wants to marry. He is the kind of man who lets his business go to pot while he wins loving cups sponsoring civic promotion plans that enrich everybody but himself. By the time he has reached the turning-worm point he has been, in his bewildered, slightly pixie way, so thoroughly ineffectual that Your Uncle Dudley could be offered on double bills with the guarantee that no one after seeing it can feel less than masterful for at least half an hour. Out of the routine stands one very funny scene in which Horton gives his nephew (William Benedict) a lesson in the art his fellow-citizens have taught him in his hour of need: what to say to an old friend when he asks you for a loan. Seven Keys to Baldpate (RKO). Modernization of the grandfather of modern mystery dramas which George M. Cohan made out of Earl Derr Biggers' novel 22 years ago consists, in the present version, of transforming the crooks into gangsters and of permitting the audience to make fun of the plot as it unfolds. It is a technique which has salvaged many an old-fashioned property, but Seven Keys to Baldpate is too good theatre to need much of it. It is still exciting when the door of Baldpate Inn opens upon a stormy night to let in, as interruptions to the novelist (Gene Raymond) who has made a bet that he can write a book in 24 hours, six more possessors of the only key: 1) a girl reporter; 2) a detective employed by an insurance company; 3) a gangster's wench; 4) a local hermit; 5) a gangster who has chosen the premises for the delivery of $200.000 by 6) a wealthy gentleman (Grant Mitchell). There are times when Gene Raymond overworks his quizzical expression but aside from this he is the perfect mystery lead for double bills.

*Agoraphobia is a morbid dread of being in an open space.

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