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Moments: A lion mangling a native lute player; a lion tamer going mad with fear when lions, loose and hungry, besiege him and his shipmates in a cave. A moment not composed by Creelman occurred when Tarzan, 3-year-old trained Nubian lion, was startled by the whir of motors in a hidden camera box while Bickford was lying on the ground in front of him. The beast sank its teeth in the actor's neck, shook him, dropped him, leaped on his prostrate body, stood there until scared off. Nine days later Bickford, with his bandages disguised by makeup, got out of the hospital and lay down again in front of nervous Tarzan. Guards with rifles were on hand in case Tarzan, excited by the smell of half-healed wounds, should misbehave again. This time he only sniffed courageous Bickford, played the scene obediently. Bickford played two more scenes necessary to finish the picture, was too sick to take a scheduled part with Shirley Temple in The Littlest Rebel.
I Dream Too Much (RKO) is an operatic formula picture, cut to fit the coloratura voice, the small, neat form, the pretty face and the sharp French accent of Lily Pons. The operatic basis for its plot is the one which enables Miss Pons to carol Caro Nome from Rigoletto to her provincial music teacher, to make a big splash in Paris, to exhibit her navel in Hindu undress as she negotiates the spectacular Bell Song from Lakmé. Introducing a second formula, Henry Fonda, a U. S. musician who thinks he can compose opera, picks up Miss Pons, performs the impossible under France's laws by marrying her during an evening of drunkenness. Under the mistaken impression that his music is better than his wife's voice, Fonda receives a shock when he is ignored at a large party celebrating Soprano Pons's triumphant début. Taking the usual course for men in his plight, he makes a scene voicing his self-pity as a failure, disappears. Miss Pons, thoroughly bored with lonely success, finds him driving a taxi, turns his bad opera into good musicomedy. Agreeably sung by Lily Pons are four songs by Jerome Kern, including a waltz called I Dream Too Much, Little Jockey on the Carrousel and I've Got Love which the diva has described as a " 'ot song, very 'ot." The picture also introduces blandly comic Eric Blore (Top Haf) and an amiable seal. Good shot: Blore & seal gazing reproachfully at Miss Pons, who has stolen the seal's breakfast fish, cooked it for her husband.