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Small comedies investigating minor aspects of the U. S. industrial scene have long been a Warner specialty. This one, less realistic, less ribald and less funny than Convention City, becomes satisfactory entertainment due to the efforts of comedians like Glenda Farrell.. Hugh Herbert and Ruth Donnelly whose presence on Warner's list of contract players is the real reason for pictures like Traveling Saleslady. Good shot: the dazed chemist (Hugh Herbert) responsible for the idea of liquor-flavored tooth paste, displaying the results of his formula for champagne powder-soap that fizzes.
West. Point of the Air (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) is made with the ostentatiously acknowledged assistance of the U. S. Government for the supposed purpose of promoting patriotism and advertising the Army. It shows how Big Mike (Wallace Beery) helps Little Mike (Robert Young) get through the Army aviation school at Tavis Field, Tex. In the course of the picture, Little Mike's best friend loses his left leg in a crash, Big Mike has his buttons cut off in an unjust dishonorable discharge and Little Mike becomes involved with a feminine bad influence (Rosalind Russell) to the detriment of his romance with the daughter (Maureen O'Sullivan) of the Post Commander (Lewis Stone) who makes a speech in which he warns his students that few if any of them are likely to survive their training period. All this suggests that Army Aviation is a profession fit only for maniacs.
Except for cinemaddicts who are not yet bored by shots of airplanes flying in formation or of Wallace Beery snuffling on somebody's shoulder, West Point of the Air is not much more effective as enter- tainment than as propaganda. The dialog, by John Monk Saunders, is literate. Robert Young gives a civilized performance. Best shot: an anonymous stunt flyer, doubling for Aviator Beery in one sequence, making a belly-landing.
Ten Dollar Raise (Fox). This is the kind of picture that is made to go with the good picture on double bills. Hubert T. Wilkins (Edward Everett Horton) is a mousy little bookkeeper so prompt that the shopkeepers along his route to work set their clocks by him. And so unadventurous is he that he has worked untold years without daring to demand the $10 raise that would enable him to marry Emily (Karen Morley). The maxims of Marcus Aurelius, which are ready to his tongue, fail to console him for the pertidy of an office-appliance salesman who has given him three bad building lots as security for the loan of his life-savings.
Edward Everett Horton's chronic confusion is funny even when he overdoes it. Best sequence: Horton, drunk for the first time in his life, getting a crowded barroom to render the only song he knows, "Three Blind Mice."