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In Hollywood no name of scandal attaches to able Actress MacDonald whose chief talent, up to the release of her present brilliant picture, has seemed to be an aptitude for undressing before the camera quickly and almost completely with becoming grace and without embar- rassment. Miss MacDonald is believed to be happy in an intention to marry her public relations counsel, ardent Mr. Robert Ritchie.
The Prodigal (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) concerns a well-to-do hobo, who returns to his Southland home, falls in love with his brother's blonde wife (Esther Ralston), gallantly offers to take to the road again to avoid amorous complications. As a hobo, he has two amusing companions— a haphazard patrician hobo (Roland Young) and a lazy, guitar-playing hobo (Cliff Edwards). His experiences in tramp jungles, on freight trains, are gay but not extraordinary. Present at a foxhunt in which the hounds become confused, are passed by horses and huntsmen, he cap- tures the fox with a fish net, later lets him go. This story, by Bess Meredyth and Wells Root, is interesting enough but it might have seemed uninspired except for the fact that the prodigal is Metropolitan Opera Singer Lawrence Tibbett, who last week when telephoning his wife in Beverly Hills, Calif, from Manhattan, held the wire for 20 minutes while his small son was saved from drowning (TIME, June 29). Lawrence Tibbett sings several times in The Prodigal.