LIGHT ON THE MOVIES
Hamilton, James S.
Light on the movies James S. Hamilton Wonder Man makes twins of him to keep Danny Kaye busy, and busy it does keep him. Busy as a butterfly, with an airy, effortless activity that carries the...
...Not since Topper has a merrier hunk of ectoplasm materialized than Danny, nightclub star bumped off by gangsters, when he starts haunting his sober, bibliophile twin, even entering his body at crucial times and making a new kind of Jekyl-Hyde out of him...
...Family) A Royal Scandal—Handsome comedy of Catherine of Russia and one of her minor amours, spun out too long, with Tallulah Bankhead and Charles Coburn in grand comic vein...
...Billy Rose's Diamond Horseshoe—Gay and gaudy musical that is a fine ad for Mr...
...So there is plenty of plot, with a farcical ghost-story for twists and turns...
...Betty Grable in lavish form, assisted by Dick Haynes, William Gaxton and Beatrice Kay...
...There is a hockey game, too...
...It is not a weighty show, but a fairly long one, which he keeps sprightly and generally sparkling, always gay and often very funny...
...Mature...
...Mature) I'll Be Seeing You—A war-shocked soldier's readjustment to civilian life, warmly and sympathetically presented...
...Family) It's a Pleasure—Sonja Henie skates again, in a frail little story that doesn't get much in her way...
...All, eventually, to bring the gangsters to bay...
...Family) Dillinger—A fairly factual case history of the once notorious Public Enemy...
...Counter Attack—Paul Muni as a Russian paratrooper buried in a cellar with a variegated lot of Germans who are his prisoners...
...The movies have been slow in learn-ing how to use people like Danny Kaye, who would have been vaudeville stars in the old days and now find their best-lighted spots in swanky nightclubs: solo performers who sing, dance and do one-man, set-piece comedy acts...
...Busy as a butterfly, with an airy, effortless activity that carries the whole show lightly along with him...
...Also, it is evident, he is an actor as well as a personality, successfully on his way to something pretty high up among the brighter stars...
...Played expertly for excitement, tension, and human interest...
...Family...
...Tension and the obvious moral characterize it, with a grim performance by Lawrence Tierney...
...J. Carroll Naish is the real star of a touching and significant story, surprisingly well assisted by Dorothy Lamour...
...Rose's night club...
...Family) Colonel Blimp—Handsome and entertaining coverage of the changes made by the years from the Boer War to the present in an English soldier-sportsman...
...Family) It's In the Bag—A completely Fred Allen show with all his characteristic quirks and comicalities...
...A Tree Grows in Brooklyn—A fine and sensitive dramatization of a generous section of the popular novel, with outstanding acting all around and superb direction...
...Family...
...Joseph Cotten, Ginger Rogers, and Shirley Temple lead an all-round good cast...
...Family) * * * A Handy Guide To The Best Current Films A Medal for Benny.—A tragi-eomedy by John Steinbeck about the exploitation of war heroes, laid among the paisa-nos of southern California...
...Not to put the whole burden on him, there are beauteous Goldwyn Girls to brighten up the background, and a tiny dancer named Vera-Ellen who doesn't even have to be pretty to hold her own...
...Samuel Goldwyn, with his infallible show-sense, knows he has a find in Danny Kaye, and knows also a good movie has to be a story instead of a string of specialties...
...Full of humor, good nature, and contemporary color, but overlong...
...Danny Kaye's blithe and boyish vitality permeates the picture like a breeze...
...The star is generously aided by other big names in small parts...
...Family...
Vol. 9 • June 1945 • No. 26
