Rio Rita (RKO). No one can enjoy musical comedy unless he has trained himself to endure patiently the dull moments that fall between a song and a dance and a story. These moments in Rio Rita consist of a heavy melodrama about a Mexican girl, a captain of the Texas Rangers, an alleged bandit. The vehicle is a handsome series of photographs, occasionally colored, of a musical comedy. Knowing that years of success had made the original music boring, the producers have put in some good new songs, the best being "Sweetheart, We Need Each Other." RKO's policy of revivifying somewhat shopworn stars by publicizing them as new discoveries has worked out well with Bebe Daniels. She may not have as good a voice as Ziegfeld's stage Rita (Ethylind Terry) but she sings well enough and gets her lines over. Best shots : Miss Daniels in her metal dress; a Mexican padrone respect fully kissing a moneyed young man be cause he takes him to be a safecracker.
Even her friends never knew Bebe Daniels could sing, but no cinematically informed person, hearing that she was going to try, would doubt her ability to do it. For 20 years Bebe Daniels has done everything that any scenario required her to do. In the old Pathe comedies she used to get plastered with dough, tossed in blankets, dumped into ponds out of laundry baskets. Before that she took child roles with Selig. From Pathe she graduated to wearing silver wigs in Cecil B. De Mille's period pictures. Lately, in her 40th to 49th pictures inclusive, she has been uniformily a slightly madcap but inherently sensible heroine whose activities whether in college (The Campus Flirt), a newspaper office (Hot News), a bathing suit (Swim, Girl, Swim, The Palm Beach Girl), or more esoteric backgrounds (A Kiss in a Taxi, Lovers in Quarantine, Senorita), embodied a gaiety only faintly flavored with sentiment. Bebe Daniels had a good time and seldom took a holiday. She was engaged to Charles ("Fastest Human") Paddock, but called it off. One winter there was a popular song called "Bebe, Be Mine" and even now when she goes to a cabaret the orchestra leader usually recognizes her and starts to play it—a gay, only lightly sentimental song. Bebe Daniels likes all games but likes swimming better and riding still better and best of all to drive a fast car fast. She is seldom arrested.