One Rainy Afternoon (Pickford-Lasky) is probably the most complete casual picture ever offered as the first production of a new company. It is abo a kiss in a theatre. Philippe Martin (Fracis Leder) gets seat No.99 instead No. 66 and Mile Pelerin (Ida Lupino)the kiss intended for Yvonne (Countes Liev de Maigret).
Mlle Pelerin makes a disturbance which spreads out of the theatre into the press is heightened with engaging exaggerations until Martin is a figure whom all female. France regards with a happy combination of revulsion and beguilement. He is known as "The Monster," and from the moment in court when he gives in rhapsodic language the reasons for the kiss, his fortune is made. The theatrical manager (Roland Young) who discharged him from a production in which he played the part a train dispatcher now arranges a musical comedy which duplicates the behavior of Philippe on the night of the kiss.
Jesse L. Lasky and Mary Pickford paid some $400,000 to cast this gossamer in celluloid as their first offering for United Artists release. They ornamented it with an assortment of expensive bit players with lavish sets, with mild satiric sorties on Law, Censorship, the Press, the Family.
One Rainy Afternoon succeeds by carefiul artistry in not being quotable. It not being quotable. is a musical comedy without words and without plot. Its virtue is its nonchalance which inexplicably becomes a striking feat of dramaturgy. Typical characters: Countess de Maigret as the wife whose idea of an escapade is to ride around the block in a taxicab with a lover who can be with her only in dark motion picture houses; Hugh Herbert as the theatrical prompter who, when off duty, prompts from force of habit the conversational clichés of those around him.
Many of the actual production details were handled by Mr. Lasky, since Mary Pickford is heavily occupied with her Parties at Pickfair" broadcasts, Christian Science and social life.
Last month Pickford-Lasky applied to Washington for permission. to offer two million dollars worth of stock in their new company. They have two stars under contract (Francis Lederer and Nino Martini) plan four more pictures this year.
Special Investigator (RKO) concerns a criminal lawyer (Richard Dix) who is good at persuading juries to acquit under-worldlings. When he is denounced by an outraged judge and his brother (Owen Davis Jr.) is killed, Dix changes his ways, joins the Department of Justice as a special investigator. The gangsters, having stolen a large amount of gold bullion, buy a Nevada ranch with an abandoned mine ship out the gold as newly-produced metal. Matters are made harder for Dix when he becomes enamored of the ringleader's sister (Margaret Callahan), but he is helped when the "gold miners" start shooting each other.
One surprise of Special Investigator is that comic relief is confined to a laudable minimum. Another is the appearance of Erik Rhodes, the elfin corespondent of The Gay Divorcée, as a sinister racketeer.