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June Moon (Paramount). Using the slight story of a scatter-brained youth who leaves Schenectady to write popular song lyrics in Manhattan, June Moon builds a satire on song writers and their lady friends, their bons mots and their ridiculous but engaging selfimportance. The scatter-brained youth meets a girl on the train who falls in love with him. He re-turns to her after adventures in Tin Pan Alley. These include advances made by the cold-hearted mistress of a music pub- lisher, committing malapropisms which cause him to be the butt of Broadway tune-sharpers. Finally he gets $2.500 for a song, because he has given the publisher a good excuse for getting rid of his girl. Jack Oakie makes the talkie almost as funny as the play by Ring Lardner and George S. Kaufman, which was the most hilarious of the 1929-30 Manhattan season. The wisecracks of a cynical pianist suffer slightly in not being rendered by Harry Rosenthal, who created the role. The song publisher's mistress is played a little too broadly by June MacCloy. Most of the acid and laughable dialog of the play has been retained, as has the depraved and tuneless anthem, composed by a writer of novelty songs: Should a father's carnal sins Blight the life of babykins? All I ask is: Give our child a name—mean, a last name. My Past (Warner). Pregnancy used to be established in the films by a glimpse of tiny garments. Preliminary activities were intimated by two pairs of shoes out-side a door. Grown slightly more sophisticated, the talkies still employ euphemistic symbolism. In this picture it becomes necessary for an actress (Bebe Daniels) to tell a young man whom she loves that she is the mistress of an older man, his best friend and financial patron. This she does by grasping an armful of roses.
The plot revolves around the loyalties of the three persons involved. The young man (Ben Lyon) wants to marry the actress. He is unable to do so because he owes a debt of gratitude to her lover (Lewis Stone). These complications are resolved when the older man retires from the situation in a Monte Carlo setting. He is last seen standing on the deck of his yacht, drinking a toast to the young man and the actress who remain ashore.
On Location
A crackling evening over White Bay, Newfoundland, last week. A lonesome woman, solitary radio operator on Horse Island, took a long bedtime look at a brig-antine's bulk in the broken ice 16 miles off shore. It was the Viking, seal hunting ship from which Varick Frissell* with a troupe of 15 last year took the major part of a talkie, to be named White Thunder. For continuity, he this year wanted shots of seals pupping and the pups learning to swim. He also wanted scenes of sealers dynamiting icebergs out of their ship's path. The Viking was loaded with explosives. The crew of 139 would take care of the rough work. Henry Jackson Sargent, fellow explorer,† and A. G. Penrod, cameraman (Down to the Sea in Ships), would do the picture-taking.