• U.S.

Cinema: The New Pictures: Nov. 29, 1937

6 minute read
TIME

Merry-Go-Round of 1938 (Universal). If it had no other virtues to speak of, this skedaddling musicomedy would be worth mentioning for one fact alone: it brings to a wider audience Comic Bert Lahr’s theory that only a barytone can chop a tree. It has other virtues as well: Jimmy Savo, exquisite pantomimist whose film career was nearly blighted two years ago by a luckless appearance in Ben Hecht’s & Charles MacArthur’s haphazard Once in a Blue Moon; Billy House, fleshy Mr. Bones of old-time minstrelsy; addlepated Comedienne Alice Brady; Mischa Auer, well cast as a lean and bony swami. Foster Fathers Savo, Lahr, House and Auer combine their comic efforts in cementing the romance of their theatre-born ward (Joy Hodges) and Scion John King. Since this scheme merely involves hoodwinking Alice Brady it turns out to be not too difficult. Comics Auer and Savo dabble in the occult. House impersonates an English noblewoman, in his spare moments trains Fall Guy Lahr for a wrestling bout. Actress Brady is properly taken in. Best shots: Mummer Savo bestowing an imaginary wedding present with all the airy panoply of pantomime; Swami Auer winning Wrestler Lahr’s bout for him with levitation’s artful aid; Barytone Lahr’s “Song of the Woodman” (“What do we chop when we chop a tre-e-e? Buckets for the well, poles for American Tel. and Tel. . . . The better mouse trap, the movie mag, the mast to hoist our country’s flag . . . that’s what we chop when we cha-ha-ha-hop a tree”). Submarine D-1 (Warner Brothers). Behind an array of such box-office buoys as sailors named Butch, Sock and Lucky (Pat O’Brien, Wayne Morris, Frank Mc-Hugh), Warner Brothers demonstrate the advances that have been made in undersea safety since the disasters that befell the S-4 and S-51* in the last decade.

Heretofore when the cinema has chosen subsea subjects, it has usually focused on a stricken boat on the seafloor, has peered in at anguished men gasping for air, sweating great globules of mineral oil (which looks more sweaty than sweat). The undersea mishap that climaxes Submarine D-1 is taken in a reassuringly even stride. Under the unruffled direction of Lieut. Commander Matthews (George Brent), everything goes like clockwork. In the equalizing chamber the crew stands chattering about horseraces and San Diego girls while water creeps up to their waists, submerges the lower end of the tubular escape hatch. Presently the hatch cover is raised, a line attached to a cork buoy shoots upward to the surface and the men don “escape lungs,” resembling hot-water bags. Then with clips holding their noses and mouthpieces gripped between their teeth, the crew in alphabetical order follow the escape line by easy stages to the surface.

For the one man hurt in the crash, a chief petty officer (Pat O’Brien) directs the lowering of a roomy rescue bell which fastens over the hatch, permits a rescue to be conducted in comfort and style. No cineminventions, both the rescue bell and the escape lung are in service in the submarine division of the Navy, have been developed since the S-4 and S-51 disasters. For the absorbing technical accuracy of the film, credit goes to Navy-minded Director Lloyd Bacon, son of the late Actor Frank Bacon (Lightnin’). Director Bacon joined the Navy at the start of the World War, was commissioned as a photographic expert, now holds the rank of lieutenant-commander (reserve), spends vacations on navy cruises. Ebb Tide (Paramount). The tall tale, originally told by Robert Louis Stevensonand Lloyd Osbourne, of the adventures of three beachcombers in a stolenschooner never bore up very well under literary scrutiny. But in the kindlier glow of cinema Technicolor, Ebb Tide’s whoppers become leisurely implausibilities, and the story’s calm unreality is disturbed only by a thumpingly real and remarkably photogenic typhoon.*

Three adventurers—a discredited sea captain (Oscar Homolka), a sniveling, cadging, little cockney (Barry Fitzgerald) and an English remittance man (Ray Milland) whose remittances have stopped coming—commandeer a Sydney-bound schooner, deprived of its crew by plague, and set off for South America to sell their stolen cargo and invest in mines. Their fates and that of Frances Farmer (a studio addition to the passenger list) are determined by a stop-over at an uncharted South Pacific island ruled with a rifle by a religious madman (Lloyd Nolan).

Although Actor Homolka mars his early sequences by facial displays known as mugging, he finally brings his role under the control that distinguished his work in British films (Rhodes, A Woman Alone). Pug-faced, whimsical Barry Fitzgerald, Hollywood recruit from Ireland’s Abbey Players, mugs too, but mugging, reckless shadow boxing and a cinemaddiction to strong drink are the Fitzgerald stock in trade. Ebb Tide provides several “firsts”: It is Technicolor’s first sea story; Viennese Oscar Homolka’s first Hollywood vehicle; blonde Frances Farmer’s first appearance in a sarong. Navy Blue and Gold (Metro-Gold-wyn-Mayer). “As long as you wear the navy uniform,” says old grad Lionel Barrymore to the football squad in Navy Blue and Gold, “nobody cares greatly whether you win or lose. But Navy cares greatly how you play the game.” How they play the game in this film, under the hipper-dipper cinema coaching of Hollywood Director Sam Wood, is enough to make old-time Annapolis Coach Navy Bill Ingram turn over in his present berth.

With the Army game tied at 7-7, Navy Fullback Robert Young shakes himself loose, follows the formidable interference of rangy Centre James Stewart to the 10-yd. line. There he steps up even and, as they cross the goal line together, magnanimously flips the ball and the scoring glory to Teammate Stewart.

Although this sort of dipsy-dew bravado may gnaw the nerves of football fans, the picture as a whole will satisfy most cine-maddicts, especially those who feel that the nation’s wars are won on the playing fields of the service academies. Braving the inevitable Rover Boys stigma, the story traces the careers of three young men through Annapolis. The picture’s weighty problem is to transform Midshipman Young from a snooty self-seeker to a true-blue ensign. The goal-line gesture of nobility writes a flourishing Q.E.D. to the problem. George Bruce’s well-knit screenplay brings out most of the highlights of Annapolis life without making the film seem like a guided tour of the academy.

*Rammed by the steamer City of Rome off Block Island, R. I. on Sept. 25, 1925, S-51 sank with a loss of 33 men. S-4 collided with a Coast Guard destroyer off Provincetown, Mass, on Dec. 17, 1927; her crew of 40 all died.*Not nearly as fierce nor as long, however, as Hurricane’s 20-minute hurricane (TIME, Nov. 15).

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