(3 of 4)
For the rest, even such changes as having Peter murder the Duke of Towers (John Halliday) instead of his martinet uncle probably will not entirely reconcile contemporary cinemaddicts to Du Maurier's pre-Freudian conception of the dream. Peter Ibbetson is a tasteful and solicitous exhibition of a box office champion that has lost its punch. Best sequence : the Duke of Towers sardonically informing his wife that she and Peter Ibbetson are in love. The Melody Lingers On (Reliance) is a misnomer. What lingers on is the life story of a pianist (Josephine Hutchinson) and her search for her mislaid bastard who, when found, wants to be an opera singer like his Italian daddy (George Houston).
A Night at the Opera (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). Current Marx Brothers story: Irving Thalberg, giving them their present contract, pointed out that he was offering as much for three brothers as they had received before the fourth Marx turned agent. Yelled Groucho Marx: "What do you mean? The same dough? Without Zeppo, we're worth twice as much." Since Gagman Groucho supplies much of the Marx humor before the camera, this is a fair sample of the dialog in A Night at the Opera. Confined but little by a script by George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind, or by the interpolation of legitimate operatic numbers, Groucho follows his own formula of throwing out gags, good and bad. as fast as he can talk, letting the good ones float the bad ones, trusting that the average will favor him.