Greenwich Village (20th Century-Fox) provides a hackneyed but handsome vehicle for a number of Hollywood virtuosos, notably Brazilian Dancer Carmen Miranda and the plug-ugly king of illiterary men, William Bendix. Resplendently decked out in Technicolor, the film is a gaudy, expensive improvisation on the oft-told story about a cafe singer (newcomer Vivian Elaine) who yearns to be a musicomedy queen, and a struggling composer (Don Ameche) who wants to have his concerto played at Carnegie Hall.

Hardly any of this is as interesting as the improvising that Bendix (materially assisted by Miranda) does with the King's English. As an ambitious nightclub entrepreneur, he substitutes affability for finesse and rides to glory as a Broadway producer, pausing periodically to potshot people who think high-flown language is better than low-blown horse sense.

Typical shot: Bendix, his anthropoidal brow heavily creased, incredulously surveying a modern painting to determine which end is up.

Meticulously well-mannered in private life, William Bendix is probably the world's highest-paid professional ignoramus. As such he now rates star billing at his studio and makes more money than the President of the U.S. He owes his present prosperity an part to his failure as a grocer.

Born on Manhattan's Third Avenue 40 years ago, Bendix was the son of a singer, had one uncle who was a concert violinist, another who was a conductor at the Metropolitan. Spurning the family profession, he started life as a bat-boy for the New York Giants, later did some amateur acting at the Henry Street Settlement. He became a grocery clerk while still in his teens, eventually wound up as manager of a store in Orange, NJ.

In 1935 his grocery was gobbled up by a supermarket. In quick succession, he became a singing waiter, a night-club master of ceremonies and a cheese salesman. Starting on Broadway in a play which failed to open, he proceeded to parts in six quick flops and a hit, Saroyan's Time of Your Life. This in turn led to his Hollywood start in a bit part with Hepburn and Tracy in Woman of the Year. He established himself in Wake Island. Greenwich Village is the first picture in which he has sung and danced. Next role: Captain Purvis in A Bell for Adano.

Arsenic and Old Lace (Warners) is a reasonable facsimile of the Broadway comedy about two Brooklyn spinsters who make a hobby of dosing old men with arsenic. By inverting the traditional concept of murder as a crime of passion and turning it into an ingenuous diversion for pixillated old ladies, wholesale slaughter is made an innocently delightful subject.

In Brooklyn, Abby and Martha Brewster (played with twinkling good humor by Josephine Hull and Jean Adair, creators of the stage roles) are looked upon as just two fluttery old maids lovingly taking care of a crack-brained nephew (John Alexander) who thinks he is Teddy Roosevelt. Little do the good-natured local cops dream that there are twelve bodies buried in the cellar. Presently a truculent, criminally insane nephew (Raymond Massey) appears. He also has twelve murders to his credit and a crooked sawbones (Peter Lorre) to help him. A whimsical competition ensues to see who will be first to bag number 13.

Director Frank Capra has done little to the original play except expand the part of a third nephew (Cary Grant) from a compact, satirical sketch of a rambunctious, woman-hating, New York drama critic to a rambling portrait of a mannered, incredulous young man who loves the girl next door. However, much of what remains is pure gold. Only when the humor self-consciously strains to convulse rather than to warm its audience will playgoers begin to feel that the movie comes off secondbest.

CURRENT & CHOICE

Hail the Conquering Hero (Eddie Bracken, Ella Raines; TIME, Aug. 21).

Wilson (Alexander Knox, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Thomas Mitchell, Charles Coburn; TIME, Aug. 7).

Dragon Seed (Walter Huston, Katharine Hepburn; TIME, July 31).

Since You Went Away (Claudette Colbert, Joseph Cotton, Shirley Temple, Jennifer Jones; TIME, July 17).

Double Indemnity (Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward G. Robinson; TIME, July 10).

Going My Way (Bing Crosby, Barry Fitzgerald; TIME, May i).

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.