The New Pictures

The Rainbow Man (Sono-Art). A new, independent producing company has probably fulfilled its intention of building a box-office success on the Jazz Singer formula around Minstrel Eddie Dowling. When Dowling's pal, an acrobat, is dying after a fall from a trapeze, he promises to take care of the acrobat's little boy and keeps his promise through some amusing and a number of saccharine episodes, a love affair, and recurrent Irish-tenor melodies. Best shot: the audience in the Arcadia Opera House. Best song: "Sleepy Valley."

The Hole in the Wall (Paramount). A band of crooks, recruited from the best talent of the legitimate stage, robs gullible ladies who come for messages from the dead, until one real ghost, through the mouth of brilliant Claudette Colbert, gives away the gang's secret. Best shot: a kidnaped baby on a wharf-ladder.

Through Different Eyes (Fox). When the jury decides that Edmund Lowe was the fellow who killed Warner Baxter, a young girl jumps up in the courtroom and tells what really happened. In spite of this framework, the courtroom atmosphere is pretty real and the story depends enough on character to interest its actors. Best shot: mixed bridge in the Manning's livingroom.

Show Boat (Universal). The problem of knitting episodes of a novel in a way that will reduce or eliminate, for picture purposes, the chapters introduced to show the passage of time, is emphasized in Edna Ferber's romance of Mississippi minstrels because her story touches three generations of show people and includes the life of one of them from childhood to maturity. This was not the only problem that confronted Producer Carl Laemmle when, having bought the cinema rights to Miss Ferber's book, he bought also the rights to the musical comedy that Florenz Ziegfeld had made out of it. Somehow the stretched narrative had to be delayed long enough to make it vocal. The best singing is done in a prolog, related to the text only by its tunes, in which Helen Morgan, whose voice is later apparently heard issuing from the lips of Laura La Plante, sings "My Bill" and "I Can't Help Lovin' That Man." Of the progress of the showboat, Cotton Palace, down the river, Director Harry Pollard has made a picturesque, oldfashioned, tedious melodrama, full of conventional photography and exaggerated acting. Magnolia (Laura La Plante), an awkward young woman with a long jaw, elopes with Gaylord Ravenal (Joseph Schildkraut) in a rowboat. Later she becomes a great actress, though this is hard to believe because Miss La Plante is such a bad one. Best shot: the play given on the stage of the show boat. Silliest shot: Schildkraut drunk.

Helen Morgan, star of the stage Show Boat, cast in the prolog of the picture to sing some of her songs, was a 16-year-old shopgirl when a group of Chicago admirers bought her a ticket to Montreal where she won $1,000 in a beauty contest. Later, in the cast of George White's Scandals, she began to sing songs sitting, droop-lipped, on a piano; then in Americana, then in her own night club, she climbed from the piano-top to success. When Miami persuaded Universal to hold the film premiere of Show Boat in its town instead of Palm Beach last month, Helen Morgan went by plane from Manhattan to climb upon the inevitable piano, stimulated by the applause of many notables. When she had sung, Joe Frisco capered, W. C. Fields was called from his balcony seat to tell a story, a Warner brother took a bow, silence fell. The crowd which had paid $5.50 for seats grew uneasy. At length it was announced that the sound device had been tampered, the operators kidnaped by unknown assailants. Miami glowered at Palm Beach. Next evening, while Miami crowds saw Show Boat for 50-c-, the "gala" opening was held in Palm Beach. On the day of the first Manhattan performance last week, Miss Morgan was in court, charged with violating the 18th Amendment in her night club. She did not take the stand. Her witnesses insisted that she was only a night club employe, no proprietor. Said the prosecuting attorney in his summation: "She has conducted herself like a lady in court. There has been no wisecracking around here. But this woman, with her God-given talents, has sold her birthright for a mess of pottage." The jury refused to convict her. The Duke Steps Out (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). Nonsense about a young student in a California co-educational university who wins the world's light-heavyweight fisticuffing championship and the girl he loves, is made pleasant and almost credible by the acting of William Haines and by Joan Crawford's handsome legs. Best shot: the crowd at the ringside the night Duke beats Frisco.