The New Pictures

Susannah of the Mounties (Twentieth Century-Fox) is, of course, that old trouper Shirley Temple, age 10, this time a waif from a waylaid wagon train. Her role in the North-West Mounted Police is: 1) making Orderly J. Farrell MacDonald say his prayers and 2) teaching six-foot-two Randolph Scott to waltz, knees akimbo, to the tune of Learning McFadden to Waltz.*

Her role in the great Northwest is to bring lasting peace between the Empire builders and the howling Blackfoot Indians, in token of which Big Chief Maurice Moscovitch dubs her "Golden Hawk, Little Spirit of the Sun."

Heap big eyewash as cinema entertainment, the possible influence on U. S. young of Susannah of the Mounties is not to be taken lightly. In Susannah Shirley smokes. She enjoys her first whiff of the weed with a young Indian hostage called Little Chief (Martin Good Rider), passing back & forth a small but sure-enough pipe of peace. Whatever the effect of this may be on the behavior of Shirley's moppet public, its effect on Shirley is to make her act sick. The effect on stolid, 13-year-old Martin Good Rider is imperceptible. A Blackfoot Indian lad from Montana, he was picked for the role because he photographed well in the New York Daily News as a returning communicant from the New Orleans Eucharistic Congress last year. Martin is a veteran votary of tobacco. But off the set he refuses anything but Corona Coronas.

Maisie (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) is quite a girl. A tank-town showgirl from Denver, but no blowzer, she is frank, fresh, full-blown, natural, vibrantly on the up & up. Maisie lets the cinemaudience know early that life has braced her for a right uppercut and a left to the jaw, so being stranded in Big Horn, Wyo. with only 15-c- during rodeo week puts no undue strain on her morale. She takes a stand behind the counter of a shooting gallery, goes gunning for a big, silent ranch hand (Robert Young), misses his heart with her first try. Happily pursuing him out on the range, Maisie is resourcefully wrangling her man with a healthy woman's zest when into the picture pops an incompatible couple from the East, laden with a love triangle and a lot of other well-worn cinema luggage. What goes on thenceforth is not in Maisie's line.

Maisie is, unexpectedly, Cinemactress Ann Sothern, who, at 30, after five years in cinema, finds herself a find. Cinemaddicts know curvilinear Ann Sothern as a glamor girl, and as a glamor girl she has endured all the familiar permutations. When she was born in North Dakota, her name was Harriette Lake (of the submarine Lakes). When Columbia Pictures signed her, Harriette changed her name to Ann Sothern, dyed her brown hair to varying blonde shades, got nowhere in particular. RKO took her over, let her hair drift back to its natural shade, called her a "brownette," let her endorse Luckies, put her in fancy comedy (Smartest Girl in Town, Walking on Air, There Goes the Groom). This winter Cinemactress Sothern made up her pert mind to try something different. In Trade Winds (TIME, Dec. 26), she started her traipse back to earth.

Newly signed by M-G-M for Maisie, Cinemactress Sothern shed the glad rags and phoney attitudes of her new-rich cinema past, became her North Dakota self. As Maisie, she is a healthier Jean Harlow, an untarnished Mae West. Whether she can keep her natural pewter shine is a question. Her next scheduled venture: How to Get Tough.

Daughters Courageous (Warner Bros.-First National). Cinemaddicts who saw Four Daughters, with John Garfield's bitter suicide and Gale Page and the Lane sisters (Priscilla, Rosemary & Lola) winding up behind various eight-balls, may expect quite a turn from this cinema. Daughters Courageous racks the whole bunch up again for a new break--less bruising, less startling, more fun to watch.

This time Father Claude Rains is a sort of early-bird Enoch Arden, vagabonding back to mother and the girls after 20 years of French leave just as mother is fixing to marry again. This time John Garfield is an incredibly graceless, beachcombing wise guy, a rhinestone in the rough with some strange romantic glitter for Priscilla. This time mother and the girls all get what is best for them, and nobody suffers more than a bad case of sniffles. Next time, the four daughters will return in something called Four Wives.

Not a carbon copy, not a sequel, yet not entirely a fresh and uninfluenced cinema, Daughters Courageous has a coltish, unaffected charm, considerable wit, an ill-concealed admiration for its two picaresque but impossible male mainstays. Not calculated to stir up too much emotion, one scene in it will nevertheless bring goose-pimples to many a tough-bearded male. The scene: the girls, barbering their stepfather-elect, shaving downwards over his Adam's apple.

*One, two-three. Balance like me. You're quite a fairy but you have your faults. While your left foot is lazy, your right foot is crazy, But don't be un'azy, I'll learn you to waltz. (Singing this icky classic, Mistress Shirley properly says "teach" instead of "learn.")

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