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Without Orders (RKO) contains one exciting sequence in which an airline stewardess (Sally Eilers) takes over the controls of a transport plane in a storm, lands it safely on radio instructions from her pilot boy friend (Robert Armstrong), who is on the ground. For the rest, one more minor-league investigation of air travel implying that this is an adventure rather than a convenience, Without Orders is likely to arouse more indignation from airline executives than enthusiasm from lay audiences. Best and most inevitable shot: the wrecked plane of a stunt flyer (Vinton Haworth) bursting into flames after its crash.
Pigskin Parade (Twentieth Century-Fox). Whether this was intended as a musical picture with a collegiate background or a football picture to end all football pictures remains uncertain and unimportant. What comes out is an all-time high in gridiron mirth and a musical that ranks with the season's best. For the radio celebrities, revolving stages and philharmonic orchestras that are current cinemusical trappings, Producer Darryl F. Zanuck has substituted a story that prances like a mustang, half-a-dozen songs with hit possibilities, a cast of capable young troupers who perform their functions with a contagious enjoyment.
Yale would never have played coeducational and nonexistent Texas State University if a New Haven office boy had not made a mistake. Since the invitation cannot be rescinded, Yale's press agent (Eddie Nugent) pounds out enthusiastic copy. Texas Coach Slug Winters (Jack Haley) is enthusiastic, too, until his tough wife Bessie (Patsy Kelly) fractures his star passer's leg. In time's nick Slug fills the gap with a barefoot Texas melon-grower named Amos (Stuart Erwin) who can toss a cantaloupe incredible distances, learns to do even better with a football. Despite the intervention of a blizzard, the charms of Arline Judge and a good deal of assorted harmonizing, Amos wins the Yale game by taking off his shoes and stockings in the Yale Bowl and racing through the snow to a touchdown.
Catchiest of the good tunes by Lew Pollack & Sidney D. Mitchell seems to be It's Love I'm After, sung by Judy Garland, a 14-year-old Murfreesboro, Tenn. girl.