The New Pictures

This Above All (20th Century-Fox), adapted from Eric Knight's novel of the same name, asks the bitter, irrelevant question: Why should a young, disillusioned, lower-middle-class Englishman risk his life for the upper classes unless he is sure of a new shake after World War II is won? Like the novel, the picture fails to give a satisfactory answer.

Clive Briggs (Tyrone Power) raises the question, and he has a right to. He had fought hard and well at Dunkirk. Home again, on sick leave, in civvies, he grouses about the men who led him: ". . . stupid, complacent and out of date, with no claim to leadership but birth and class and privilege ... in a struggle to preserve the same rotten, wornout conditions that had kept their class in comfort. . . ." When his leave is up, he decides not to go back to the army, becomes a deserter.

Prue Hathaway (Joan Fontaine), upper-class daughter of a renowned English medico (Philip Merivale), never does answer that one, except to ask her beloved deserter to trust his heart, not his head. But she manages to straighten him out and point his nose toward battle once again with the reasonable admonition: "Whatever does happen, let us decide it, not the enemy."

Whatever its shortcomings as a kid-glove social document, This Above All is a remarkably good love story. WAAF-Girl Joan Fontaine, who has what it takes to play lady-in-a-haystack, quietly meets her man (Mr. Power) in the blackout, goes away with him to a seaside resort, where he leaves her, eventually rejoins him for keeps after the Luftwaffe has almost battered his brains out in a London bombing. It is a restrained, sensitive, appealing performance--a tribute to beauteous Joan Fontaine, to the intelligent direction of Anatole Litvak, and to the painstaking coaching of Director Alfred Hitchcock, who nosed her into a 1941 Oscar (best actress) with his picture Suspicion.

Although Tyrone Power gives the performance of his cinematic career as the embittered young deserter, it is not good enough. His handsome, unlined face contradicts the profound words he is asked to utter. He does not for a moment look as if he had either thought or lived them. This deficiency is partially offset by the slick performances of bit-players Merivale, Nigel Bruce, Alexander Knox, Gladys Cooper, etc. Their considerable assistance helps make This Above All an entertaining, occasionally inspiring picture which almost came off big.

Miss Annie Rooney (Small; United Artists) is that old rug-cutter Shirley Temple, now 13, brown-haired, weighing 102 lb., standing a fraction over five feet, and desperately trying to maneuver through girlhood without losing her cinemappeal. It is tough sledding. Shirley Temple fans will have to suffer such inanities as Annie Rooney until she gets her growth.

The picture is a swing version of the Little Annie Rooney that curly-locked Mary Pickford played to the last tear drop 17 years ago. Shirley is a modern jitterbug from the other side of the tracks. Her talents so stun a rich Manhattan youngster (Dickie Moore) that he invites her to his socialite birthday party. Clad in a glistening, gold-spangled evening dress, Cinderella Temple jitterbugs her way into the Social Register hearts of her boyfriend's parents.

Having thus made friends and influenced them, Shirley paves the way for the successful exploitation of her small-account father's (William Gargan) invention of a substance that is "better than rubber," just the thing for the treads of World War II's tanks. Before the picture is over, Shirley endures a kiss from her boyfriend--nothing sensational, just a puppy-peck on the tip of her nose. Afterwards the boyfriend moans: "I'm just a cad!"

The life and impending loves of Shirley Temple have become the responsibility of Edward Small, Hollywood's most successful independent producer. He made a three-picture agreement with the dimpled Hollywood veteran after her mother told Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer off for the studio's insipid handling of the star's recent return (Kathleen; TIME, Jan. 12) from her two-year retirement.

Producer Small has never made a Grade-A picture. The hundreds of films he has turned out have been run-of-the-mill stuff like The Corsican Brothers (TIME, Jan. 5). But they have one thing in common" all but two have made money.

Now 51, Small is an ex-hotel page boy, dishwasher, small-time vaudevillian. A bantamweight 5 ft. 4, he is cocky, quick-tempered, hardworking, and probably the most ethical producer in the industry. In the early '20s he was Hollywood's biggest actor's agent. That activity left him one day with a cinemactress named Corinne Griffith on his hands. Unable to peddle her to any studio, he turned producer and made twelve pictures (first: Lilies of the Field) with her. All of them made money.

Although Small is strictly a businessman, he has undoubtedly done Hollywood good by demonstrating that successful pictures can be made without big-studio backing. His pictures cost an average $550,000 apiece--of his own money. For success, lacking stars, they depend principally upon a good swashbuckling (The Count of Monte Cristo) or sensational (Twin Beds) story with a well-known title which his publicists can exploit. This formula has made smart Mr. Small a millionaire. Some day it might even produce a really fine picture. That was probably what Miss Temple, who is a millionaire herself, had in mind when she signed up.

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