The New Pictures

The Bank Dick (Universal) is the long-awaited reward for followers of cob-nosed Comedian W. C. Fields. The reward is the more rewarding because his recent pictures were impeded by the disconcerting presence of irrelevant comics. In this one, the Sultan of Sloth finally achieves the kind of delightful outrage which has made his fan list long & faithful. There are 74 minutes of almost clear Fields--as much a one-man show as the fences of cinema formula will allow.

The original screen play is attributed to Mahatma Kane Jeeves, an obvious pseudonym to those who know that Fields writes his own lines. His own character--a small-town tosspot accidentally given the job of cop at the local bank--is labeled Egbert Souse (pronounced Soo-zay). His small town is called Lompoc--a coincidence which may cause some embarrassment to citizens of Lompoc, Calif. When Mr. Souse drinks a pony of straight whiskey, he always demands a water chaser, which he uses as a finger bowl; with each drink he requires a fresh chaser, because "I never like to bathe in the same water twice." He is allergic to the mere presence of children. When he spies an urchin in his bank, brandishing a toy pistol, Fields pounces like a terrier on a rat, has to be pulled off by the child's mother. He follows his steady nose through the most sidesplitting chase sequences since the days of the Keystone cops. He is surrounded but not obscured by such accomplices as Franklin Pangborn, Shemp Howard and Jessie Ralph, bearing such names as J. Pinkerton Snoopington, Joe Guelpe and Mrs. Hermisillo Brunch.

The great comedian is in top form.

Love Thy Neighbor (Paramount) is the radio quarrel of Comedians Jack Benny and Fred Allen transposed to celluloid. On the screen, the comics resemble a pair of choleric Boston terriers--barking insults at each other. Sample gibes:

"You'd better close that slow leak under your nose before I vulcanize it."

"That Benny's as crooked as a corkscrew's shadow. He's lower than a snail's outlook."

Paramount has set this blistering badinage against a musicomedy background with a Jimmy Van Heusen-Johnny Burke score sung in a pleasing soprano by Strip-Teaser Mary Martin. In the plot, Mary is Fred's niece, Jack's sweetheart. Her efforts to achieve a reconciliation lend enough momentum to keep the story rolling to a climax where she and Jack wed, produce twins resembling the embattled comics.

Friends of the Benny-Allen feud will undoubtedly relish the opportunity of watching as well as hearing the pair's celebrated ruction". Others must be satisfied with occasional appearances by Negro Comic Rochester (Eddie Anderson), who plays Benny's insolent valet, and the Merry Macs, a quartet of swingsters. As an added attraction, Miss Martin revives Cole Porter's My Heart Belongs to Daddy.

Good shot: Rochester, dressed as Romeo, croaking a potential hit called Dearest Darest I?

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