Every Day's A Holiday (Paramount). In the peculiar idiom of show business, Mae West's art comes under the head of umph. This quality is expressed by sinuous gyrating and prurient murmurings. That this sort of thing will make money is well established. Actress West's last recorded cinema earnings (1936) were $323,000, about as much salary as Bethlehem Steel's president, Eugene G. Grace, and the chairman of its board, Charles M. Schwab, draw down together. That umph sometimes shocks the public is established too (see p. 57).
For Every Day's A Holiday Paramount made a determined effort to de-umph Mae West by vacuum-cleaning the script, disguising Mae in a fantastic black French periwig. But, like trying to purify the water by whitewashing the village pump, it did not work. To situations considerably less potential than the story of Adam & Eve, Actress West imparts a meaning all her own; despite all directorial and script-writing efforts to make her steer a straight course, she still writhes as she pleases. As sexless a game as selling a sucker the Brooklyn Bridge resembles, in the West vernacular, a bargain sale of great temptations.
Other impressions of Every Day's A Holiday: snowy-haired Charles Winninger in typical foxy grandpa mood, Negro Swing-Trumpeter Louis Armstrong leading a torchlight procession, the plushy mustiness of the turn of the century, and a few gags, all mothered and murmured by Miss West. Typical examples: Q. "You mean he made love to you?'' A. "Well, he went through all the emotions. . . ." "Keep a diary and some day it'll keep you. . . ." "She's not as strait-laced as she's laced up to be. . . ."
With the release of Every Day's A Holiday, Paramount and Mae West parted company. She is under contract to Producer Emanuel Cohen, whose production Paramount has sponsored. Last week Producer Cohen and Adolph Zukor, Paramount head, climaxed a four-year feud by calling off their deal. What bothered Paramount more than Mae West's loss was that on Producer Cohen's personal payroll is Crooner Bing Crosby.
Mannequin (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). When Actress Joan Crawford, in the lithe chic of a $2.98 bathing suit, adjusts her shopworn profile to a summer night and sighs to her handsome vis-a-vis, "why do you suppose the moon is always bigger on Saturday night?," a million understanding shopgirl hearts sigh with her. And when, temporarily exalted to a swank Manhattan penthouse, Joan looks over the parapet at the twinkling city, "piled up against the dark," many a less lyric lass wishes that she, too, might sometime be so pent up.
For the last decade, Cinemactress Joan Crawford has been hushaby lady to millions for whom dreams at prevailing box-office prices are the only escape from failure and mediocrity. Her partner in romance is usually some slick-haired reigning actor. In Mannequin, crinkly-eyed, roughhewn Spencer Tracy seems ill at ease, especially with dialogue lines like "somebody hit me with a hypo full of love."