The New Pictures

The Snows of Kilimanjaro (20th Century-Fox) is likely to remind most adult males of their more lurid adolescent daydreams. Produced by Darryl Zanuck and vaguely based on the Ernest Hemingway short story, the movie is a Technicolor travelogue that ranges from Africa to Europe to backwoods Michigan, a sort of scenic railway running through a Tunnel of Love.

The picture opens in Africa, where toughly sentimental Gregory Peck lies dying of gangrene. While vultures perch hungrily on a nearby tree, Peck trades cynical dialogue with his wealthy wife (Susan Hay ward) and relives some of the juicier parts of his Casanova past. The lovelorn trail begins with Teen-Ager Helene Stanley, who was jilted by Peck in consideration of a new rifle and an assured income from Uncle Leo G. Carroll. Next comes Paris, which gives Director Henry King a chance to create an evocative scene of a hot jazz concert of the 1920s, featuring the alto sax of Benny Carter. Here, Peck finds liquid-eyed Ava Gardner who admits to sometimes "posing in the altogether" and is forced to whisper such sentiments as "Will you be kind to me? I think I'm a little afraid of you." Finally, there is blonde Countess Hildegarde Neff who swims, sculpts and is described as frigid, even though she is just as insistent about her passion for Peck as all the other girls.

Between lovers' quarrels and reconciliations, Peck shoots a charging rhinoceros,' fights lukewarmly on the Loyalist side in the Spanish Civil War, writes a succession of bestselling novels, and spends his spare time feeling desperately sorry for himself.

The acting honors are easily captured by a herd of hippopotami plunging like dolphins in an African river, and by a Hollywood hyena whose night prowling about the camp has a superbly eerie quality. Among the Hollywood cast, Ava Gardner is surprisingly effective in the early scenes in Paris. Screen Writer Casey Robinson describes the script as "one-third Hemingway, one-third Zanuck and one-third myself"--a dilution of talent that probably accounts for the pat, happy ending, the atmosphere of whining self-pity, and the resolute backing away from any issues except sugar-coated love.

O. Henry's Full House (20th Century-Fox) might have been entitled Quintet, for it takes its cue from the successful Somerset Maugham omnibus movies, Trio and Quartet. It is a grab bag based on five short stories from the popular, prolific pen of William Sydney Porter.*With five different sets of directors, writers and stars and with chatty narration by John Steinbeck. O. Henry's Full House is long on box-office names, sometimes short on the natty irony that O. Henry gave his trick tales of Manhattan.

The stories: The Gift of the Magi (0. Henry's most popular story) about a poor bookkeeper (Farley Granger) who sells his gold watch to buy a set of jeweled combs for his wife (Jeanne Grain) for Christmas, while she sells her beautiful hair to buy him a platinum watch fob; The Last Leaf, in which an unsuccessful artist (Gregory Ratoff) paints his masterpiece to keep a dying girl (Anne Baxter) alive; The Clarion Call, about a cop with a conscience (Dale Robertson) who has to arrest an old chum (Richard Widmark).

More successful than the rather floridly filmed drama and melodrama of these three is the comedy of two other episodes. The Cop and the Anthem wisely casts Charles Laughton as a dapper old bum who unsuccessfully tries to get himself locked up in a warm jail for the winter. A burlesqued version of The Ransom of Red Chief presents Fred Allen and Oscar Levant as dour confidence men who, after making the mistake of kidnaping a little monster of a hillbilly boy, finally pay his parents a reward for taking him off their hands. Sample dialogue (strictly not O. Henry as the boy sicks a bear on his terrified captors: "He's a cinnamon bear," says Allen. Replies Levant: "I don't care what flavor he is. He's more apt to taste me."

Beware, My Lovely (Filmakers; RKO Radio) casts Robert Ryan as a most unhandy man about the house. A psychopathic killer who has just polished off his latest victim. Ryan is hired by World War I Widow Ida Lupino to do some odd jobs in her small-town Victorian home. Before long, Ryan, who is given to mental blackouts and odd fits of anger, has locked all the doors from the inside, ripped the phone from the wall and is scaring Widow Lupino half to death with his menacing attitude.

Adapted by Mel Dinelli from his story and play, The Man, the movie is a pseudo-psychological thriller that succeeds in being more sedative than suspenseful. Ida Lupino, looking frail, suffers long and lugubriously, and moody Robert Ryan eventually seems more of a bore than a bogeyman.

Monkey Business (20th Century-Fox) works overtime at a far-fetched plot about a laboratory chimpanzee who accidentally mixes an elixir of youth. When Research Chemist Gary Grant and his wife (Ginger Rogers) drink some of this magical potion, they promptly revert to adolescence. Gary gets himself a crew haircut, a loud sport jacket and a fire-red convertible. Ginger, turning into a giggly jitterbug, slips a live goldfish into Tycoon Charles Coburn's trousers and plants a custard pie under his posterior.

Ponderously written by Ben Hecht, Charles Lederer and I.A.L. Diamond, and noisily directed by Howard Hawks, Monkey Business has some amusing monkeyshines. But the picture's simple-minded running gag wears thin long before the elixir of youth wears out for Gary and Ginger. Also prominently on hand: Marilyn Monroe as a pneumatic private secretary to whom Boss Coburn hands a sheaf of copy with the instruction: "Find someone to type this."

*Who reputedly borrowed his "O. Henry" pen name from Orrin Henry, a guard at Ohio State penitentiary, where Porter served three years and three months in the '903 for embezzlement of bank funds.

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