LIGHT ON THE MOVIES
Light on the Movies James S. Hamilton Blood On The Sun—The old-time Jimmy Cagney is satisfyingly rampant in this spy-gangster melodrama of pre-Pearl Harbor Japan. An American newspaperman in...
...Billy Rose's Diamond Horseshoe—Gay and gaudy musical that is a fine ad for Mr...
...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...
...Played expertly for excitement, tension, and human interest...
...Family...
...Aside from the simplified psychological aspects, no one is likely to care much...
...J. Carroll Naish is the real star of a touching and significant story, surprisingly well assisted by Dorothy Lamour...
...However often the Tanaka plan was spirited out of its homeland, in fact or in fiction, it hasn't altered the course of history...
...Mature...
...And at the end . of his temperance lecture, waiting for him in the rapt and inspired Chautauqua audience, is his early love, as young and prissy as ever, and the implication is that they will live happily for what remains of forever after...
...The fights and the binges are the most invigorating things in this simple tale...
...Family...
...The rougher personalities come off most plausibly among the supporting players—the ladies are rather too school-girlish to be impressive...
...Betty Grable in lavish form, assisted by Dick Haynes, William Gaxton and Beatrice Kay...
...Family) # * * The Great John L.—Bing Crosby's first effort as a producer turns out to be almost as vigorous a temperance lecture as "Ten Nights in a Bar-Room...
...Rose's night club...
...At any rate it suggests that the spirit of Commodore Perry has lived on through the years, and has had more than a little to do with the inferiority feeling that eventually drove the Japanese mad...
...The Blood On The Sun natives are the familiar Nips of movieland, part monkey and part devil, under whose make-up the knowing fan can immediately spot such old friends as Robert Armstrong and other Hollywood dependables...
...Which adds up to making him able to take on Jap thugs and war-lords one to the dozen, and knock 'em cold...
...Probably unconsciously, certainly unintentionally, this film throws an unexpected light on why the Japanese must resent Americans so bitterly...
...The casualty lists seem to bear out the movie notion that one American can dispose of scores of Japanese, but it can't be quite such an off-hand business as even such a stalwart as Cagney can take in an afternoon's stride...
...Conflict—Humphrey Bogart as a wife-murderer who is caught by the psychiatric trap of Sidney Greenstreet...
...Family) It's In the Bag—A completely Fred Allen show with all his characteristic quirks and comicalities...
...John L., it appears, loved a refined Boston maiden, who in turn loved him, but she had doubts about his character —his fighting ambitions and erratic temper didn't fit into her idea of a happy marriage and she had a New Englandish notion that he should reform through inner conviction, not simply to please her...
...Family...
...Tension and the obvious moral characterize it, with a grim performance by Lawrence Tierney...
...Mature) Counter Attack—Paul Muni as a Russian paratrooper buried in a cellar with a variegated lot of Germans who are his prisoners...
...Mature) I'll Be Seeing You—A war-shocked soldier's readjustment to civilian life, warmly and sympathetically presented...
...The way Cagney takes it for granted that he can go where he pleases and do whatever he pleases, safe under the protection of the American eagle, is something to think about if it happens to be representative of how things actually were...
...There are moments, believe it or not, when he makes even his fellow-players seem real...
...A Tree Grows in Brooklyn—A fine and sensitive dramatization of a generous section of the popular novel, with «ut-standing acting all around and superb direction...
...Cagney comes to a safe end of his adventures, but he, too, seems to have been unable to prevent the attack on Pearl Harbor...
...Peggy Ann Garner (the top child star of the day) heads an excellent cast...
...Family) Junior Miss — Always amusing, often touching, home comedy, about the excitements of having lively young teenage daughters in the family...
...Full of humor, good nature, and contemporary color, but overlong...
...Family) * * * A Handy Guide To The Best Current Films A Medal for Benny.—A tragi-comedy by John Steinbeck about the exploitation of war heroes, laid among the paisa-nos of southern California...
...He had only the vaguest glimmer of what she meant, and in his heartbroken state he hastily married a New York lady of the stage (Linda Darnell), who had been pursuing him diligently...
...All the glories of his fisticuff triumphs failed to bring him contentment, and he got wilder and wilder on champagne and frustration.' His wife eventually realized that he had married the wrong girl and offered him freedom, but it was only after her death that he saw the light, smashed up a barroom mirror and went on the wagon...
...Family) Dillinger—A fairly factual case history of the once notorious Public Enemy...
...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...
...Cagney, who is unrivalled as an actor in his particular line, and who can make every movement and intonation seem important and significant, makes the whole business invariably interesting, sometimes almost plausible...
...The life and loves of the Boston lad who became the first great American prize-fighting champion were beset and bedevilled by the demon rum, largely in the form of champagne, and at the end of this rather slap-dash biography, John L. Sullivan is . preaching temperance at the Chautauqua Liter a r y and Scientific Circle, so effectively that small boys astonish their mothers by voluntarily resolving to ease up on the candy-eating...
...An American newspaperman in Tokyo, Cagney is perky, scrappy, and invincible, as quick with his wits as with his feet and fists, and an adept at Judo as well...
...Greg McClure is John L., a new actor who is still in the probationary stage of his profession, but he puts a world of heart and good intentions into the part...
...The star is generously aided by other big names in small parts...
...Cagney has got wind of the Tanaka paper—the Mem Kampf of the Far East that figured in the movie biography of Jack London in which that adventurous novelist tried, decades ago, to make America aware of what Japan planned in the way of world conquest, in vain...
...Joseph Cotten, Ginger Rogers, and Shirley Temple lead an all-round good cast...
...Several Oppenheimish killings occur before our spirited American representative gets away with his skin, aided by a half-Chinese girl who appears, in the person of Sylvia Sidney, to be quite a nice sort of young lady, though mysterious...
...Family) Out of This World—Eddie Bracken (with Bing Crosby's voice), Diana Lynn, and Veronica Lake in a thinnish comedy lavishly dressed up with girls, songs, and big-band music...
Vol. 9 • July 1945 • No. 30
