Christmas Waifs

Because they usually have to work & play too hard and go to bed too early, the 12 million small fry who compose a substantial element of the U. S. cinema audience cannot get to the theatre as much as either they or Hollywood producers would like. Vacations are exceptions. On the theory that children like pictures about children, several such appear at Christmas, at Easter and in June. Released on schedule last week were two major productions involving the top single-digit stars of both sexes, RKO's Bobby Breen, 9, and Twentieth Century-Fox's Shirley Temple, 7.

Until some producer rounds up Hollywood's alarmingly large child actor population for an all-star effort, possibly on the lines of Grand Hotel in a day nursery, there is no chance for new discoveries in the well-explored terrain of plots for such performers. Central figures of both RKO's Rainbow on the River and Twentieth Century-Fox's Stowaway are, as usual, waifs doing as much good for themselves as possible and struggling hard to keep out of the orphanage.

Stowaway exhibits Shirley Temple as Ching-Ching, an exiled waif, hopping around Shanghai and looking cut for chances. Her missionary parents have been killed by outlaws and she is on the town. When it starts raining. Ching-Ching crawls into the rumble seat of a roadster, closes the top. The roadster, which belongs to a playboy named Tommy Randall (Robert Young), goes aboard a ship bound for San Francisco.

Object of a waif like Ching-Ching, as seasoned child cinemaddicts are well aware, is to find rich and personable parents to adopt her. Randall is unmarried and the only eligible girl on board, Susan Parker (Alice Faye), is already engaged and traveling with her future mother-in-law. This does not dishearten Ching-Ching. She shows Randall and his valet (Arthur Treacher) how to sing a lullaby, goes sightseeing in Hongkong and voices a few proverbs, which detective picture addicts will recognize as from the Chanese. Sample: "A child without parents is like a ship without a rudder." When Susan Parker and Tommy Randall arrange a marriage of convenience for the honor of becoming her guardians, Ching-Ching is still unsatisfied. She foils their plans for a divorce, puts their menage on a more substantial basis.

Gordon and Revel songs, amiable dialog by a trio of ace screen writers, adroit direction by William Seiter and effortless acting by a sophisticated cast give Stowaway a quality recent Temple pictures have lacked, of simple, unself-conscious charm. Good shot: Randall and valet, having failed to sing Shirley Temple to sleep, nodding when she croons Good Night, My Love.

Rainbow on the River is a sentimental costume drama, dated 1875, in which the cinema's No. 1 boy soprano lifts his clear and bell-like voice through a gamut of songs from Ave Maria to Swanee River, from The Flower Song by Dr. Hugo Reisenfeld to Rainbow on the River by Paul Webster & Louis Alter. When not adroitly playing his own accompaniments on an adult size banjo. Soprano Breen shows himself past master of vaudeville song-plugging technique, including clenched fists, rolling eyes and trembling smile.

Producer Sol Lesser, who made the picture, got his background as a childstar impresario by manufacturing pictures for Jackie Coogan, Jackie Cooper, Baby Peggy. Conscious of its limitations, he utilizes the waif motif in rudimentary form. Breen appears first in the custody of a fat colored mammy (Louise Beavers), who says she rescued him from a burning village in the Civil War. On the chance that ha may be the scion of a rich Northern family named Ainsworth. he is shipped to New York where he encounters a jealous little cousin (Marilyn Knowlden). a kindly butler (Charles Butterworth ) and a tyrannical old lady (May Robson) who refuses to believe she is his grandmother until a rendering of a Stephen Foster chorus prompts her to go South and investigate. Compared on points, Waif Ching-Ching comes out considerably ahead of Waif Ainsworth. Compared as pictures, Stowaway comes out ahead of Rainbow on the River, which is still considerably above average for its genre. Good shot: small Ainsworth, grudgingly allowed to attend his cousin's birthday party, fascinating her guests with his cage of dancing mice.

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