The New Pictures

Red Ball Express (Universal-International) is a tardy tribute to the U.S. Army transportation crews which sped gas, ammunition and food to Patton's Third Army when it outran its supply lines during the August 1944 Allied breakthrough in France. Red Ball Express (railroadese for top priority freight) captures some of the excitement of its subject through wartime combat film pieced out with action scenes shot at Fort Eustis, Va.

But the picture is loaded down with a complex plot about a lieutenant (Jeff Chandler) whose top sergeant (Alex Nicol) hates him because he believes the lieutenant is responsible for the death of the sergeant's brother in a prewar trucking accident. For run-of-the-movie-mill romance, there are a couple of shapely Red Cross workers and a busty mademoiselle. All in all, Red Ball Express often bogs down in a dramatic rut when it should be rolling along in high.

The Girl In White (MGM) is based on Dr. Emily Dunning Barringer's 1950 Bowery to Bellevue, about her experiences as New York's first woman ambulance intern at the turn of the century. The theme of the vigorously factual book was: Can a woman be a doctor? The issue in this rather weak, fictional adaptation: Can a woman doctor also be a woman?

As played by June Allyson, Dr. Barringer behaves more like an ingenue than an intern. And the complaints she is called upon to cure are mostly her own heartaches. She cannot make up her mind whether she loves Dr. Arthur Kennedy (playing Dr. Ben Barringer, whom Dr. Emily Dunning married in. real life) or Hospital Head Gary Merrill.

With an ailing script and stiff, pseudo-documentary direction, the picture plods along at a pace not much faster than the horse-drawn ambulances of the era.

Pat and Mike (M-G-M). Pat (Katharine Hepburn) is a lady athlete who excels at tennis, golf, baseball, basketball, skeetshooting, archery, swimming, track, boxing, ice hockey, badminton and judo. Mike (Spencer Tracy) is a pugnacious Broadway sports promoter who wears striped suits and dark shirts and hangs out at Lindy's.

No sooner does Mike set eyes on Pat than he signs her to an all-round sports contract. As Mike puts it, "She's nicely packed. Not much meat on her, but what's there is cherce." Mike puts Pat on an ironclad training schedule, along with his heavyweight fighter Hucko (Aldo Ray) and his horse Little Nell. But deep down, Mike is a sentimental slob; before long, whenever he looks at Little Nell, he sees Pat's profile instead. As a result, Pat soon forgets about her former boy friend (William Ching), and girl athlete comes to emotional grips with boy manager.

One of the season's gayest comedies, Pat and Mike benefits by George Cukor's shrewd direction, the sprightly lines of Authors Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin, and the comic capering of Old Hands Hepburn and Tracy. Aldo Ray is amusing as a dumb boxer with a foghorn voice. There is a pungent gallery of prognathous fictional sports characters, while such real sports personalities as Babe Didrikson Zaharias, Gussie Moran, Donald Budge, Alice Marble, Frank Parker and Betty Hicks show up in person.

Lydia Bailey (20th Century-Fox), based on Kenneth Roberts' picaresque novel, is a Technicolor blend of Haitian history and Hollywood horse opera. Dale Robertson is cast as a dashing, mettlesome Baltimore attorney, who not only espouses the cause of Haitian independence against the French, but also gives a helping hand to blonde Lydia Bailey (Anne Francis), a Philadelphia girl who is engaged to evil Napoleonic Agent Charles Korvin. Disguised as a mulatto field hand, Robertson saves Lydia from jungle rot and rotters, guides her past Mirabeau's cutthroat maroons, and through the conflagration of Cap Francois. By the end of the journey,

Robertson has been stabbed, shot five times, beaten up twice, and almost drowned after a jump from a 70-ft. cliff, he, Lydia, and the emerging republic manage to survive.

Drawling Dale Robertson and baby-faced Anne Francis saunter through the Haitian underbrush as if they were taking a Sunday stroll in a botanical garden. In a )rief but effective appearance, Ken Renard plays Toussaint L'Ouverture, Haiti's "ounding father, who, judging from the movie, was on hand mainly to give Robertson moral support. But it is deep-voiced William Marshall who towers above the rest of the cast physically and histrionically as fictional Haitian Patriot King Dick.

With voodoo dances arranged by Choreographer Jack Cole and plantation music the Royal Caribbean calypso ensemble, Lydia Bailey is redolent of a studio backlot jungle. As a result, moviegoers may get the feeling that the camera, by moving a frame to the right or left, might catch sight of a Southern California orange-juice stand.

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