The New Pictures

Tennessee Johnson (M.G.M.) is one of Hollywood's grown-up moments. This screen biography of Andrew Johnson, 19th President of the U.S., not only is notably faithful to the facts of his life but actually illuminates a dark chapter in U.S. history. No more adult picture of Washington politics has come out of Hollywood.

Johnson is one of the most controversial and least known Presidents. Some historians and most citizens today know him only as a bullheaded, ill-tempered drunkard who narrowly escaped impeachment by a righteous Congress. But some biographers consider him a great man, ranking just ahead of Abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens and just behind Abraham Lincoln as one of the most influential statesmen of his time. The film, which takes this view, presents it eloquently.

Andy Johnson's story is a natural for the cinema. An illiterate, runaway tailor's apprentice, Andy (Van Heflin) arrives in Greeneville, Tenn. with shackles on his ankles, has them chopped off by the village blacksmith, sets up a tailor shop, is taught to read and write by the young village librarian (Ruth Hussey), who becomes his wife. Under her guidance Andy is elected sheriff, Governor, Senator, Vice President.

As Vice President, Johnson was Lincoln's choice and a stanch Lincoln supporter, a fact overlooked by historians who cast him as a villain. Like the members of Franklin Roosevelt's "Janizariat," Johnson was attacked as a whipping boy by Lincoln's enemies. The picture does not omit the drunken spectacle Johnson made of himself at his inauguration as Vice President, but the documented fact that he was no habitual drunkard is underlined in the film by a letter to him from Lincoln: "You ornery old galoot; don't you know better than to drink brandy on an empty stomach, particularly when you are ill? . . .In hitting at you they're hitting at me and I don't mind."

Then came Lincoln's assassination and President Johnson's battles with a hostile Congress, led by the redoubtable and unscrupulous Thaddeus Stevens (Lionel Barrymore). Johnson seeks to conciliate the South and repair the Union; Stevens to punish the rebels. This part of the film treads on blood-soaked ground, has already aroused protests from a few Negro-philes, who revere Abolitionist Stevens as a hero. At the suggestion of the OWI, Director William Dieterle reshot some sequences to make Abolitionist Stevens a more sympathetic character.

With brutal frankness Tennessee Johnson scans the faces of the people's representatives in Congress: mean faces, scheming faces, corrupt, stupid, generous, brave and honest faces--the composite face of democracy. To make such an intangible dramatic and occasionally even tangible is no mean achievement. Director Dieterle's split-second direction is partly responsible, but chief credit goes to Actors Barrymore and Heflin. As fanatical, silver-tongued Thaddeus Stevens, Lionel Barrymore gives one of the best performances of his long career. Van Heflin's job is a brilliant tour de force. A veteran of second-rate Hollywood films (Seven Sweethearts, Grand Central Murder) and of the stage Philadelphia Story, he has his first big chance as Andrew Johnson.

Arabian Nights (Universal) would be just another oldtime sheik picture but for 1) sleek Maria Montez, 2) Technicolor. The new year will be Technicolor's year, and in Technicolor Miss Montez will help make it happy.

Sophisticated Producer Walter Wanger has used Technicolor to create a fabulous spectacle, but he does not take his work too seriously. The tale pokes fun at itself and slyly cuckolds the Hays office. In Nights there is a tubby old boy who claims to have been "the Bag of Bagdad." There is an Aladdin (John Qualen) whose companions jeer: "You've told that lamp story so often you believe it yourself." There is a Sinbad (Shemp Howard) whose refrain is: "This calls to mind an experience I once had as a sailor." And there is a harem which does bumps and grinds and makes the standard Hollywood harem look as well clad as a winter army on the Russian steppes.

The picture is full of fire, galloping steeds and sword play--most of the playing by copper-torsoed Jon Hall, who plays Haroun-Al-Raschid to Miss Montez' Sherazade. But that is not all. The picture is, besides, an unusually effective Technicolor job. Best shots: the play of sunlight and shadow across the rich bronze desert sands.

Arabian Nights is a forerunner of a flood of Technicolor pictures scheduled to come from Hollywood in this year. Last year Hollywood made 25 feature films in color, some 10% of its total footage. It now has 36 in production or preparation. One big studio (20th Century-Fox) plans to make 25% of its features in color. The Technicolor Motion Picture Corp., which processes color film for all the studios, is turning out some 7,000,000 feet a month. But not many of the feet will be as pretty as Miss Montez'.

Journey for Margaret (M.G.M.).

There are two Margarets. Both are about five. One of them was orphaned in the 1940 bombings of London, was adopted and brought to the U.S. by War Correspondent William L. White, who wrote a book about her. The other is a girl named Maxine ("Margaret") O'Brien who plays the part of Margaret White in a screen translation of the book. Between the story of the one and the acting of the other, Journey is one of the most appealing pictures of the war.

The newspaperman in the film (Robert Young) meets Margaret when she arrives at a London refuge for orphaned children. She stands stiffly, a strange little figure with a tall stocking cap, the shell of a magnesium (incendiary) bomb slung on a cord around her neck, ceaselessly rubbing her dry eyes with her palms. The lady in charge (Fay Bainter) suggests that she may cry if she wishes. Margaret: "You won't smack me if I beller?" "No." Margaret begins to sob, finally relieves her pent-up tension and fears in wild, convulsing wails.

The newspaperman is tired, angry and embittered. He has seen a mother running wildly about in the bombed streets with a dead child in her arms, has pulled four-year-old Peter out of the rubble with his mother's blood on his cheek, has lost his own unborn baby when his pregnant wife was injured during a raid. But Margaret drains the bitterness out of him. He finds himself--a grinning papa and a new man--eventually on a U.S.-bound ship with Margaret and Peter. As their ship sails into New York harbor, Peter, whose life has been spent in a blackout, stares at the blazing city and asks: "What's it got lights on for?" His question is satisfactorily answered.

An unpretentious tale of the quiet side of war, the picture is remarkable for its understanding of children and its exquisite performances. Robert Young as a papa with an awkward but instinctively true touch, Laraine Day as his pretty wife, and small, self-possessed William Severn as Peter are excellent. But best of all is five-year-old Maxine O'Brien as Margaret White. She comes of a stage family (her mother and aunt were dancers), wears her brown hair in pigtails, likes to fly in airplanes, saw her first movie (Gone With the Wind) at three, has posed for magazine covers, and acted a bit part in Babes on Broadway. She is just starting to school this month, but she seems already to have learned as much about life as the real Margaret must have learned.

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