Judge — November 1937 — page 25: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

MOVIES ‘AD I been more discerning I might have suspected, as I came home from the office that night, that there were unnerving forces at work and that mental content was threatened. The physical evidences were these: my wife had not dressed for dinner but instead was in a deplorable candy-striped house- coat; and covering the coffee-table in front of the couch on which she untidily rested were sheets of paper bearing large block-letter scrawls. Now Susan never writes a letter and indeed never writes anything except an occasional list headed “Things to Do,” which usually includes such esoterica as “phn hrdrssr," “call P.T. re 17th,” and “get dg stepped.” So I should have known that here was a Bhcnomence strangely disturbing, even though there was nothing to indicate the soul-and. home-wrecking events to follow. But in all innocence and some absent- mindedness I kissed her, commented on the shortening days that now found me coming home by twilight, stroked the recently stepped dg and retired to make ready for dinner. It was not until the second cup of coffee, an invariable rite, that there came any explanation of the unprecedented literary activity I had noticed on arrival. “Do you know,” Susan asked, “‘any- thing about movies and titles?” I didn’t know much. Somewhere in my reading I had run across the absorb- ing story that the Earl of Warwick had been in Hollywood but had been forced to change his name for screen purposes. I relayed this morsel of Eosip. “Silly,” said Susan, “Not that kind of titles. I mean titles of movies. Like ‘Stella Dallas’ and ‘Broadway Melody of Nineteen Umpty-Ump.’” “Oh, you mean titles,” I said “No. Why?” “Well, do you know whether the movies buy those titles?” You can see that I still had no pre. sentiment when I tell you that I contin- ued with my coffee before admitting that my knowledge of motion picture nomen- clature was somewhat less than sketchy and then ventured again to inquire the reason for her sudden interest. “Well, you see,” she said. “I've got a title that some company ought to buy. And the movies pay so much I thought maybe they'd give five hundred or five thousand or something like that.” “What's the title?” “Let me explain the idea first. You see nobody likes these double feature pictures and yet the small theatre own- ers have to get two pictures because the big ones do and so——” “And so—" “And so I think a movie would be ‘Double Feature. As I gasped, Susan beamed triumph- ‘ood title for one November 1937 antly and then hurried to explain further: “Get the idea. ‘Double Feature with Robert Montgomery and Rosalind Rus- sell.’ Then people would go in, thinking they were going to see two pictures, one starring Montgomery and the other star- ring Russell, but nobody wanting to see two pictures. And instead they would see only one and they would be grateful and go back often and meanwhile the thea- tre manager would save money because he would have had to buy only one pic- ture instead of two and he would make more money because more People would come and then he would be able to buy better pictures the next week and the week after and so on.” “But,” I objected with an assumed tranquillity, ‘The companies can't con- tinue to make pictures entitled “Double Feature.’ ” “Of course not, foolish,” said Susan. “Don't you suppose I thought of that? So they make another picture called ‘Twin Bill.’ And then another called ‘Two Stellar Attractions.’ ” “Wait,” I said. “This is ridiculous.” But by this time she was intoning title after title: “Two for the Price of One.’ ‘Eight Stars.’ That's kind of subtle. I like that one particularly. Then, when you run out of synonyms for ‘two,’ you can sort of combine titles to make it look like two pictures. You know, ‘Vogues of 1938 and Bulldog Drummond’ and ‘Laugh and Love and Merry Wives of Windsor.’ Get it?” yés. I had gotten it. And daily, since then, the virus has spread. At lunch the next day I found myself wondering vaguely what would be the effect of a movie called “Bank Night: $10,000,” if its title were glowing upon the marquees of the nation’s theatres. 1 mentioned this little conceit to Susan that night and she said contemptuously she had already thought of it and had another list along the same line: "'Screeno.” “Free Gift.” “A Chafing Dish for Everyone’—all titles of movies. Things have been getting worse stead- ily. I now fight unavailingly those ran- dom thoughts that sneak into a man’s mind just when he should be answering his mail. Such thoughts as—well, I sup- pose it would be possible for a movie company to entitle a picture, “Garbo, Dietrich and Mae West with Clark Ga- ble, Robert Taylor and Freddie Bar- tholomew,” and have it turn out a “quickie” with no one in it you ever heard of before. Or would that be ille- gal? How far can this thing go? If only Susan had kept her attentions on the ordinary things, like getting the dg strpped! —Paut Wurre. Back in Circulation, Some entertaining dialogue, and a briskly raucous performance from Joan Blondell serve to recommend this newspaper office drama for your idle mo- ments. The revised Blondell of 1938 is a more graceful, appealing and _ attractive comedienne. The new Joan's definitely got something, and we don't mean Dick Powell. The shopworn devices of the plot, I suppose, can be attributed to Warners’ profuse sen- timentality. They probably liked the Front Page theme so much when it was first pro- duced ten years a0 that they just couldn’e help telling it all over again, merely for old times’ sake. Between Two Women. The Neighbor- hood Appeal version of Men in White. MGM has carefully concealed all its stock situations beneath a high veneer, but this Boy-Meets-Girl-in-a-Hospital yarn gets _ its biggest boost from the blonde sorcery of Vir- ginia Bruce, more ravishing than ever. Franchot Tone Maureen O'Sullivan struggle with poise. Love from a Stranger. This stems from the play Frank Vosper wrote and acted in before he was so mysteriously dunked in the big pond. It wasn't a hit play, and the pic- ture, too, called for red ink in the com- pany’s ledger. It’s really unfortunate, for the movie is a triumph of mood, superbly performed by Basil Rathbone as a shell- shocked cutthroat, and Ann Harding, one of his gorgeous victims. The story is handled a little more obviously in the screen edition, yet it is essentially the highly intelli- gent melodrama it was on the stage. Sophie Lang Goes West. Even Horace Greeley’s advice couldn't help poor hie. In spite of all that's been said about Holly- wood crook dramas, they're still filming and trying to sell the boloney about the missing necklace. It goes from flower pots to cham- pegne coolers, making the rounds of every- y's pockets before it finally winds up just where it started. Lee Bowman is the guy Sophie goes straight for. Next Month: Sophie Lang Has a Baby. That Certain Woman. Mesdames X, Y and Z, with Bette Davis a valiant Carrie, lovin’ ‘n’ sinnin’ ‘n’ everything. Skilfully directed, written with a finely level Perspec- tive of tenderness and hard-boiled cysiasm, this is pretty swell drama, although it slack- ens down quite a bit before the fade-out. The best work is by Henry Fonda as the weakling husband; Miss Davis is excellent. This Way Please. Paramount meant some- thing else, but we mean the Exit. They must have had their eyes closed all during the pro- duction of this fiasco, or else everybody but the poor struggling cast was out to lunch, Women Men Marry. A confused affair about an unfaithful wife (again), her un- suspecting husband, and a counterfeit cult who carries on blackmail behind his holy domino. The result is well-served hash, rather smooth and arresting melodrama, with Claire Dodd as a menace you should like. comicbooks.com