The New Pictures

The Law and the Lady (MGM) is the third movie version of The Last of Mrs. Cheyney, Frederick Lonsdale's 1925 stage comedy of larceny in the drawing room. Inspired by the time-tested Hollywood axiom, "if at first you succeed, try, try again," the latest cinemadaptation comes off well enough to suggest that even now movie-goers may not be seeing the last of Mrs. Cheyney.

Though the producers have changed the locale, period and much of the plot, it is still the amusing story of a pair of elegant swindlers preying on a group of social snobs who turn out to be just as fraudulent, in their own way, as the crooks. The culprits team up in Victorian London, where one is the perfect lady's maid (Greer Garson), the other a scampish, penniless aristocrat (Michael Wilding). Moving on to gullible San Francisco, where wealthy climbers are eager to fawn on English nobility, the maid passes for a marchioness and the blue blood for the perfect butler. Their plans go awry, and the comedy shifts from drawing room to bedroom, when Lady Greer arouses the ardor of a hot-blooded California aristocrat (Fernando Lamas) at a weekend party.

In its last reel or two, The Law and the Lady falters under the weight of romantic complications that Hollywood has piled on the Lonsdale original. Until then, however, it breezes along pleasantly. The lines are bright, the style brittle. Actor Wilding and Actress Garson (unaccountably wearing a black wig) make a suave and charming pair of scoundrels.

Dear Brat (Paramount). First came 1947's Dear Ruth, a comedy hit; then came the sequel, 1949's Dear Wife, a turkey. The third of the series can be described as a turkey croquette. Like its predecessor, Dear Brat celebrates the adolescent excesses of Mona Freeman, playing a feminine Henry Aldrich. This time she cues Edward Arnold's slow burns and Billy De Wolfe's prissy swivets by trying to rehabilitate a hardened criminal (Lyle Bettger), who bears a special grudge against Judge Arnold. The result is the kind of movie that helps sell television sets.

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