The New Pictures

Meet Me in Las Vegas (M-G-M). "They have everything in Las Vegas"--or so they say in Las Vegas. If there is anything missing, nobody can prove it by this picture. In less than two hours, as the moviegoer goes hotfooting after the

CinemaScope camera through the world's gaudiest gambling hell, he undergoes seven acts of vaudeville, two complete ballets, about 15 casinos, several thousand slot machines and an oil gusher--not to overlook Dan Dailey, Cyd Charisse, Frank Sinatra, Lena Home, Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds, Frankie Laine, Cara Williams, Jerry Colonna, Agnes Moorehead. Sammy Davis Jr., the Four Aces, the Slate Brothers, Peter Lorre, and something that looks suspiciously like a seven-year-old geisha girl.

Oddly enough, the picture also has a plot. The story connects all these curious elements in much the same way as the numbered dots in a newspaper puzzle can be linked up to form an animal figure. In this case the observer soon realizes that he is working on a dog.

Cyd Charisse is a big-name French ballerina who is haughtily accustomed to being the toast of the town. In Las Vegas. she turns out to be just a very expensive kind of digestif: she is expected to dance while the customers eat. Even more shockingly barbaric, she feels, is the mechanical monster she finds lurking in her boudoir--her own personal 25-c- slot machine that was installed, the management hastens to assure her, as a sign of especial esteem. Worst of all, the male population is made up mostly of gamblers, who are so busy losing money that they have no time to make girls. "There's no one," she sputters indignantly, "to be aloof from." That, as every moviegoer will recognize, is the cue for girl to meet boy. And the minute Dan Dailey comes scuffing onscreen with an I'11-always-be-a-boy-at-heart sort of grin that richly expresses the sham in the shamrock, Actress Charisse has plenty to be aloof from. He grabs her hand in a casino, holds it for good luck --and wins three times in a row. This, of course, is the start of a love affair as well as a bank account. However, the grimly spontaneous kissing sometimes makes way for some fairly fresh kidding (when the lovers hold hands, a thousand hens lay all at once, and oil explodes from a dry well) and for a few high-class variety numbers. Lena Home and Cara Williams provide the best of these, though Frankie Laine's performance is not without its morbid fascination, and Hermes Pan's ballet about Frankie and Johnny has a sort of hatpin wickedness--even though Ballerina Charisse succeeds in blunting the point.

Anything Goes (Paramount), as far as most moviegoers are concerned, so long as Bing Crosby is in it. For The Groaner's golden anniversary in films (this is his 50th picture) his studio could supply the public with nothing better than this leaden souvenir, but it will probably keep the turnstiles squeaking.

Actually, this is the second whirl through the reel for Bing and Anything Goes. He was starred, with Ethel Merman and Charley Ruggles, in Paramount's 1936 version of Cole Porter's Broadway musical--a fact that may partly account for the bored look he wears throughout this remake. Bing tries so terribly hard to look relaxed that he just looks tired. The plot--which has nothing to do with the original except that it concerns show people on shipboard and leaves the audience completely at sea--is even tireder. Donald O'Connor and Mitzi Gaynor, on the other hand, are so insensately energetic that most of their dances seem inspired by St. Vitus; and Jeanmaire slinks intensely across the screen in black tights that seem to have been sprayed on, makes throaty little cries of ecstasy and murmurs hoarsely, "Je suis toujours prete."

Anyway, the Cole Porter songs (You're the Top, I Get a Kick Out of You) still move along so liltingly that they will probably not be judged by the way they are sung.

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