The New Pictures

Easter Parade (MGM) would have more than enough if it presented nobody but Fred Astaire. Besides Astaire, it has Judy Garland, Peter Lawford, Technicolor, several old, durable songs by Irving Berlin, and some perishable but pleasant new tunes, also by Berlin. Besides all that, it gives the best role of her career to Ann Miller, who sports the most interesting thighs since the unveiling of Linda Darnell. There is also a story (Lawford-loves-Judy-loves-Astaire-loves-Ann), but nothing much need be said about that.

Astaire has done finer dancing; but if he were dancing with both feet tied behind him, he could probably still give distinction to a show. As in The Pirate, Miss Garland does a comic tramp dance, with teeth blacked out. She is very cute at this but, after all, she has other talents; it will be a pity if she gets typed as a hobo. Now & then the picture has real gaiety and flow. More often, it just ambles along. Considering its assets, it is by no means as good as it ought to be. But, considering the hot weather, you could do a lot worse.

Fury at Furnace Creek (20th Century-Fox) is a better-than-average western, and thus a considerably better-than-average movie. Victor Mature, a gunman employed by silver-mining Tycoon Albert Dekker, suspects his boss of framing his father (an Army officer court-martialed after an Indian massacre at an Arizona fort). It is fairly easy for Mature to run around incognito, since none of his law-abiding family would claim him. His ineffectual brother (Glenn Langan), hot on the same vengeful trail, is more of a headache; brother nearly bungles everything.

Much of Fury has the neatly packed economy of the classic western. Some of the outdoor photography is excellent. Music, throughout the picture, is wisely held to a minimum; in most of the outdoor shots and in the final chase, there is none. Thus unencumbered, Director Bruce Humberstone has created intense excitement out of beating hooves, panting horses, long, treacherous silences, heart-stopping squeaks of leather and the sinister scuffling of men stalking each other through the ruined fort.

Mature effectively extends his new lease on life as a sympathetic tough guy (Kiss of Death). Coleen Gray, as his high-principled girl friend, is pert and pretty but has very little to do. Reginald Gardiner, one of the villains, suffers very well as a man who has fallen so low that the mere dodging of death is all that he lives for. Peaceful Jones (Charles Kemper) is a refreshing anomaly from the tired list of western old-timers and dry-tongued farmers. After each Saturday-night drunk, he is chained to a tremendous log (Furnace Creek has not yet got around to building a jail) which he cheerfully heaves up and carries along with him, back to the bar.

Give My Regards to Broadway (20th Century-Fox) is another of those painful cinemoans for the good old days of good old vaudeville. It argues the silly proposition that if you just don't admit that vaudeville is dead, it isn't.

Albert the Great (Charles Winninger) certainly will not admit it, even though his "temporary job between bookings" (his agent will wire him any day now) with an electrical appliance company in Camden, NJ. lasts for 20 years. He regards his children merely as part of the family juggling act, and drives them every afternoon to practice new song & dance numbers in the suburban garage. When they grow up and decide to live like other people he considers their rebellion against his incredibly singleminded dream (to see Albert the Great & Family in lights again), as subversive as a ripe tomato hurled over the footlights. His son (Dan Dailey) sticks to him longer han his two confectionery blonde daughters, and this protracted loyalty gives Dailey a chance to do some insignificant but pleasant singing and dancing. But finally he too concludes that life with his best girl (Nancy Guild) is preferable to a routine of Indian clubs and straw hat.

Dream Girl (Paramount) was a highly successful stage comedy that Elmer Rice wrote for his talented wife, Betty Field. It is about a working girl who runs an unsuccessful bookshop and has a crush on her brother-in-law. She escapes from these annoying realities in a series of glamorous daydreams--until love of a rude young book reviewer brings her back to earth.

For the screen, this unpretentious yarn has been given standard Hollywood treatment, i.e., the daydreamer is now an heiress and her moderately subtle character is interpreted, with full brass, by rambunctious Betty Hutton. Playing her bookish boy friend, Macdonald Carey behaves more like the president of the Junior Chamber of Commerce. All in all, the movie manages to destroy the original play's tenderness and its moral ("facts are better than dreams"*). Dream Girl gets by, with little to spare, on the strength of some frantically energetic scenes showing Betty as a flaming senorita, as a South Seas trollop and as Madame Butterfly.

* Also the concluding thought in Winston Churchill's The Gathering Storm (TIME, June 28).

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