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The Cheat (Paramount). Pictures like this seem to explain the financial discomforts to which every cinema concern except Loew's Inc. (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) is now subject. After fetching talented, exciting, polished Tallulah Bankhead home from the London stage with the intention of making her a picture star, Paramount has introduced her to U. S. cinemaddicts with three of the dustiest vehicles of the year. Tarnished Lady was claptrap about a girl who married for money and later regretted it. My Sin was a routine rigmarole about a lady who tried to conceal a Central American past in a Manhattan interior decorating establishment. The Cheat is along the same lines—about a girl who loses $20,000 gambling and to pay it, has to borrow from the villain of the piece. Her husband gives her money to cover the loan but the villain (Irving Pichel) refuses to accept a check. In two previous versions of the picture—one with Sessue Hayakawa and one with Pola Negri—this was the moment for the big scene where the heroine was branded with a red hot iron, on the back. As a novelty in this version, Irving Pichel applies the iron to Tallulah Bankhead's front,* murmuring vicious cliches as he does so. A court room scene comes later. The picture is well mounted but the plot is not nearly so diverting as Miss Bankhead's wrestling match with her material. Sample speech, from Pichel, when he is showing Bankhead a trophy case of dolls: "Once they were lovely women who were kind to me."
Flying High (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) shows Bert Lahr performing the role he made famous when the show was a Manhattan musicomedy. He is a bedazzled aviator who spends a night in a bathtub, then breaks the altitude record because he lacks sense enough to come down. Two of Flying High's best songs ("Thank Your Father," "Wasn't It Beautiful While It Lasted") have been whistled so much that they had to be left out, but in other respects the cinema improves the play.
*In the publicity pictures and advertisements, this novelty was foolishly overlooked. Cinemactress Bankhead is shown being branded from behind.