The New Pictures

Poppy (Paramount), in which W. C. Fields played on the stage in 1923 and the silent screen in 1925, is still an almost ideal vehicle for its bulb-nosed star. As Professor Eustace McGargle, broken down carnival spieler accompanied by his docile & devoted ward (Rochelle Hudson), he wanders into a village tent show, bulldozes the proprietor into giving him a concession, teaches yokels the intricacies of the pea & shell game, palms off his ward as heiress to the town's biggest fortune. By the time it has been established that she really is an heiress, W. C. Fields has had time to execute several of his most celebrated routines. He gets tangled up with a croquet set, makes a fox-terrier talk, sells five bottles of sassafras tonic to a distracted yokel who wants only one, delivers as a tagline the immortal motto: "Never give a sucker an even break."

The long and astonishing professional career of William Claude Dukinfield (W. C. Fields) is divided conveniently into three portions. In the first he was a vaudeville juggler. In the second, he became a star on the Manhattan stage. In the third he recouped a fortune, lost in 1929, as a Hollywood comedian. That Poppy might conclude the third portion was a possibility which appeared imminent last week. Desperately ill most of last year, Fields went to Soboba Hot Springs for a rest after his first picture in almost two years. There last week he was stricken with pneumonia, rushed to a hospital, placed under an oxygen tent.

Little Miss Nobody (Twentieth Century-Fox). With Shirley Temple, Jane Withers and the Quintuplets under exclusive contract, Twentieth Century-Fox currently has a corner on child stars. This situation lays a heavy burden on the firm's scenarists. Little Miss Nobody is evidence to the effect that they are not capable of carrying it without considerable strain. It is a superannuated fable about peewees at the poor farm, a mixture of practical jokery, youthful fixations and hokum melodrama. Caustic little Miss Withers is most successful when, as the black sheep of an orphan asylum, she steals Thanksgiving turkeys from a grocer's truck, chants superbly a ballad called Then Came the Indians.

Hearts Divided (Warner) turns out to be a particularly inept little costume piece in which Marion Davies proves unable to furnish first-rate entertainment even when directed by Frank Borzage and surrounded by such players as Dick Powell, Charles Ruggles, Edward Everett Horton, Henry Stephenson, Arthur Treacher, Claude Rains. Miss Davies is Betsy Patterson, a belle of old Baltimore. Mr. Powell is Jerome Bonaparte, sent over to represent Napoleon at ceremonies surrounding the Louisiana Purchase. The picture is notable solely for the Rains characterization. Ham actors long to be Napoleon. Mr. Rains makes Napoleon a ham actor.

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