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The Woman in Room 13 (Fox). While Elissa Landi was finishing a novel and making Devil's Lottery (TIME, April 11), Ralph Bellamy made two unimportant pictures in which he took the parts of a police captain (Disorderly Conduct) and a juvenile court judge (Young America). In The Woman in Room 73 Bellamy almost becomes mayor. He never does because his wife (Miss Landi) selects campaign time to divorce him. That much is plausible—Miss Landi had good cause to divorce her husband. But then the picture turns into a dictaphone drama, with no trappings omitted. In a spirit of revenge Bellamy, now head of a detective agency, sets out to prove that Miss Landi, after a happy second marriage, is carrying on an affair with a concert singer. He thinks he has accomplished his end when he has Husband No. 2 (Neil Hamilton) jailed, falsely accused of murdering the singer. But the Woman in Room 13 spoils his fun. Garnished with a courtroom scene and many a salty tear. Miss Landi's latest cinema venture makes you think her time on location would have been spent to better advantage had she used it to start another novel.
The Strange Love of Molly Louvain
(First National). Lee Tracy is an actor who can always seem chipper and spontaneous. He does so in this picture despite the handicap of having to recite gags as old as the one about putting all his bills in the wastebasket and paying the first one he draws out. Aside from his performance, there is very little that is strange about The Strange Love of Molly Louvain except that it is written with a relish for cliche which makes the few episodes which are genuine seem absurd. Thus Molly Louvain (Ann Dvorak), a cigar counter girl in a small town hotel, is deserted by a rich seducer before the picture is five minutes old. Admired by an ingenious bellhop (Richard Cromwell), she takes up with a slick stocking salesman (Leslie Fenton) who turns out to be a crook. After an interval in which she gives birth to her seducer's child, she re-encounters the bellhop. Together they are involved in a crime committed by the crook. By this time, you are likely to be confused by Lee Tracy's entrance into the proceedings. He is a chatty reporter with casual mannerisms. At first he uses unscrupulous means to learn the whereabouts of Molly Louvain, since she is wanted for murder. He does not know that she is a next door neighbor in his rooming house. When he finds it out, he regrets his activities and plans to marry her. Typical shot: Molly, disappointed by the disappearance of her first lover, making merry with the stocking salesman who replies "Atta Baby!" when she cries "Boop boop!''
The Strange Case of Clara Deane