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One in a Million (Twentieth Century-Fox J rates as a classic because it preserves for posterity the spectacle of Sonja Henie skating. Ten times (1927 to 1936) world, three times (1928, 1932, 1936) Olympic figure skating champion, Skater Henie is without doubt the best figure skater who ever lived. For her, the 80 standard figures on which figure skating is based are not a test of skill, but the vocabulary of a form of self-expression which for sheer elegance compares to ballet dancing as the ballet compares to the Lindy-hop. Skater Henie's No. i specialty, as it was Dancer Anna Pavlova's, is a swan dance. On the shrewd assumption that a cinema public which had never before investigated figure skating needed to be educated before witnessing the rarest flower of the art. Producer Darryl Zanuck insisted that she save it for a subsequent picture. What her cinema debut offers instead, in the interstices of a loosely woven story approximating Sonja Henie's own biography, is a series of simple routines climaxed by newsreels of her winning performance at Garmisch in last year's Winter Olympic Games. Superbly photographed by Cameraman Eddie Cronjager, earlier sequences of Skater Henie practicing for the Olympics on an Alpine pond, later ones of her leading an ice-ballet in Madison Square Garden, may be kindergarten to Skater Henie. Audiences are likely to find them the brilliant crystallization of a levitationist's dream.
Sonja Henie contradicts not only the law of gravity but also the rule that women athletes are physically unsuited for roles as romantic heroines. A trim-figured blonde with brown eyes, plump cheeks, a dimpled smile, she fits with assurance into an anecdote—about a U. S. theatrical manager (Adolphe Menjou) on the lookout for new talent while touring the Alps with his own troupe—of which the chief virtue is the fact that it is not much impaired by interruptions. In addition to Sonja Henie's skating, these include harmonica-tooting by Borrah Minnevitch & band, singing by Leah Ray, outrageous clowning by the Ritz Brothers.
Great Guy (Grand National) is James Cagney's first picture for the up & coming young production company whose No. 1 box-office attraction he became after he broke with Warner Bros, last year. As such, it goes a long way to disprove the Hollywood theory that, given a free hand in selecting stories and casts, an actor's vanity is sure to lead him astray. Great Guy is vintage Cagney, exhibiting him at all the shoulder-punching and sotto voce wisecracking on which was founded his reputation as the cinema's No. i mick.
The decency of Great Guy is guaranteed by the fact that its hero, Johnny Cave, is an honest public official fighting a gang of political crooks. Johnny's position on the side of law & order does not prevent him from using guttersnipe technique.
When a conniving ward leader suggests that Cave abuse his official power, he tosses his visitor's hat out the window and his visitor out the door. Johnny's love life is complicated by the fact that his fiancee (Mae Clarke) is the loyal secretary to the town's worst scalawag (Henry Kolker).