About Mrs. Leslie (Paramount). Shirley Booth, with her gilded Oscar (Best Actress of 1952, for her work in Come Back, Little Sheba) scarce beginning to peel, has already laid aside her dignity and gone for a summer's dunk in a tub of sentimental lather. For this film, based on a Vina Delmar novel, is pure soap opera, and it is the kind of suds that leaves a sticky ring around the mind. Shirley plays a part that is wallowingly reminiscent of John's Other Wife.
The wonder is how beautifully she plays it. For the first half-hour Actress Booth breathes such a warm belief into the dull things she is doing that the audience willingly suspends the disbelief the silly plot inspires.
Mrs. Leslie, a nice, middle-aged landlady in Beverly Hills, was once in a nightclub act. That was back in the days when her sacroiliac swung free, and one night she met a tired businessman named George Leslie (Robert Ryan). He invited her to go with him to California for a six-week vacation, and she did. She went for a good many years after that, too, and gave him "peace and contentment." Unfortunately, what George likes may seem to most moviegoers like the long, dull evenings at home that movies are supposed to relieve.
Mercifully, at long last, Mr. Leslie dies, leaving his girl friend enough money to buy a house, in which she spends the rest of her days, yacking at her boarders to do what the synopsis calls "striking out in search of contentment, knowledge and peace." In the general emotional drizzle, the scriptwriting provides a few rainbows of humor ("There's one thing about California," says Shirley. "No matter how hot it gets in the daytime, there's nothing to do at night"). And Director Daniel Mann, who also handled Shirley in Come Back, Little Sheba, occasionally makes the best of a bad job. As for Shirley, About Mrs.
Leslie should suggest to her that Hollywood cannot always be trusted to provide the best employment for her remarkable acting talents.
Demetrius and the Gladiators (20th Century-Fox), a sequel to The Robe, is an energetic attempt to fling the mantle of sanctity over several more millions of the entertainment dollar. It offers a number of The Robe's sets, at least two of the same scenes, and three of the same stars —Jay Robinson, who plays the Emperor Caligula with a heavy sneer; Michael Rennie, who portrays Peter as a sort of apostolic Anthony Eden; and Victor Mature, a bulky fellow who helps in filling the huge CinemaScope screen.
The first scene of Demetrius is the last scene of The Robe: the condemned centurion's bride sends the robe to her Christian friends. In trying to hide it, the freed slave Demetrius (Victor Mature) scuffles with a Roman soldier and is sentenced to be trained for the arena in a gladiatorial school.
When Demetrius refuses to kill his opponent, the Emperor substitutes three tigers. But Demetrius tarzans the beasts (obviously tame as tabbies), and a Roman noblewoman named Messalina (Susan Hay ward) decides she would like to do a little wrestling with him herself. In due time Demetrius is thrown, and lands for a brief period in the lady's bed.
The gladiatorial contests are sweaty enough as such things go in the movies.