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Mrs. Jessop refuses to recognize her bastard grandson and his mother. She stubbornly tries to forget Jim until an organizer persuades her to go to France with a boatload of Gold Star mothers to visit U. S. cemeteries. In Paris she runs into a young couple about to be thrust into the tragic situation of Jim & Mary. Mrs. Jessop straightens out that affair, returns to Arkansas to make amends for her uncompromising jealousy. Humorous shot: a mountaineer Gold Star mother in a French shooting gallery. Inept shot: Mrs. Jessop boarding a Union Pacific train in her native State. The Narrow Corner (Warner). Some of the novels which William Somerset Maugham writes are infinitely better than others. The Narrow. Corner was not one of the better ones. It concerned two friends on an island in the South Seas. Entirely as a sporting proposition, one of the friends seduced the sensual, predatory fiancee of the other. The seducer went off somewhere after this; the other man killed himself. As adapted for Director Alfred E. Green, The Narrow Corner has been so artlessly hammered into the conventional cinema pattern that all sense of motivation is lost. Patricia Ellis, in whose mouth no butter would melt, is. woefully miscast as the heartless siren. Ralph Bellamy muddles through the ambiguous part of the suicidal Dane. Douglas Fairbanks Jr., with a Ronald Colman voice as well as a Ronald Colman mustache, is too eager to display the results of his recent dramatic coaching. Add to these obstacles a clumsy happy ending, stuck on like the paper pantaloon of a lamb chop. After coming through the weirdest maritime misadventure ever screened, Miss Ellis and Mr. Fairbanks sail off into an inevitable sunset. Saving grace of the film is a characteristically superb performance by Dudley Digges as a philosophical, opium-smoking doctor. Disgraced (Paramount). Lured by a false promise of marriage, Gay Holloway (Helen Twelvetrees) accepts the caresses of Kirk Underwood Jr. (Bruce Cabot), the rich banker's son. He outfits a cosy cottage by the sea to which they repair after she has finished modeling at Maxine's in the afternoons. In spite of his disarming countenance and pleasing ways, Underwood proves to be a cad. So Gay's father, a police captain, shoots him. When the daughter tells the authorities that she did the shooting, Capt. Holloway has to frame an elaborate trap so that he may stand trial for the murder of her seducer. The jury's decision is left to the audience. Best of Enemies (Fox) brings Charles ("Buddy") Rogersonce "America's Boy Friend"back to the screen after an absence of two years. It provides him with the opportunity to exhibit his virtuosity on a number of musical instruments when, as a music student named Jimmie Hartman, he organizes a jazzband in Germany. There he meets Lena Schneider (Marian Nixon) whose father used to quarrel with his father back in the U. S. Herr Schneider now runs a German beer garden and the plot which prods Best of Enemies along hinges on the question of whether or not Jimmie will be hired to play in the Schneider funspot. There is never any question as to the ultimate embrace between Miss Nixon and Mr. Rogers.
