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Madame Bovary (Terra). Last spring Paris-Soir aired the rumor that Adolf Hitler's middleaged, platonic fancy had turned from red-haired 29-year-old cinemactress Leni Riefenstahl (who in three years as his favorite had risen to ranking Nazi film authority) to 38-year-old Pola Negri (born Appollonia Chalupec), whose round poll and lank black hair once marked her as the No. 1 vamp of the screen. Bogeyman Paul Joseph Goebbels was reported frightening Fraulein Riefenstahl by denouncing her for non-Aryan ancestry (TIME, June 21). The Fuhrer, having searched Pola's title to Aryanism, took special pains to affirm it. He had already pronounced: "It is I who decide who is a Jew and who is not."
Last week U. S. cinemaudiences saw a charmingly enameled Pola, matronly to the points of her double chin, die the remorseful death of fickle Madame Bovary. She was no longer the dashing, fiery Pola of Passion and Gypsy Blood. The 1937 Madame Bovary loves nice things, has a roving eye, a fat medico husband. Her eye gets to roving before her husband has had time to get down to the business of properly neglecting her, and the story, though warranted Aryan, is far from Flaubert.