The New Pictures

Africa Speaks (Columbia). In spite of the many patient and enthusiastic photographers who have trundled through Africa, no definite cinema of the jungle has yet been made. Probably the nearest approach to such a picture would be a composite of the best shots of such good travelogs as this--jungle newsreels which have taken a tremendous amount of time, skill and money to make, but which are inevitably dull for long stretches. Sequences from Africa Speaks which would qualify for inclusion: a swarm of locusts darkening the skies, covering the ground six inches deep, dispersing a herd of gnu, eating all the foliage off a tree; a lion killing a native boy in a scene which (if not faked) is one of the grimmest ever judged fit for public release; a strange kind of antelope called the illampa jumping 40 ft. through the air in slow motion; flamingoes goose-stepping through a marsh. Most of the other episodes, though fairly interesting, are stencils. The incidental sound effects are supposed to have been recorded in Africa but they are not convincing enough to mitigate the suspicion that they were put in later, in Hollywood. Explorer Paul L. Hoefler made the picture in 1929. His conversations and explanations are recorded on the sound machine.

The Office Wife (Warner). This will have one automatic public in the people who read Faith Baldwin's magazine story and another in those who will feel the pull of the splendid box-office title. To criticize the plot because it is familiar would be absurd, for its familiarity is its greatest strength. To be effective as drama the love-rivalry between an executive's secretary and his wife should have been worked out with far more specific, individual detail. But the producers developed it stupidly, could not keep improbability out of a situation and background so thoroughly within the experience of cinema audiences that the slightest divergence from reality is instantly detected. A smart cast, including Lewis Stone and Dorothy Mackaill, makes it a fair program film. Silliest shot: secretaries revealing their love for Executive Stone by having fainting fits.

Her Wedding Night (Paramount). Out of a complicated and rapid plot derived from an old bedroom farce (Little Miss Bluebeard) has been drawn the mood of good humor that is this picture's main distinction. Clara Bow does nothing much but does it with her usual vitality. A picture star having fun in Europe, she is married in an early sequence to a bridegroom who is standing proxy for somebody else. Events lead naturally to a pursuit in pajamas through a magnificent suite in a continental hotel where every double bed contains Charles Ruggles, who is there by mistake. He does his famous drunk act, but the best shot is the one in which he imitates a cat.

Since she got into pictures by winning a magazine beauty contest, Clara Bow has amused her public and annoyed her employers by a series of personal imbroglios. Last week the proprietors of Calneva (Nev.) Lodge tried without any luck to cash checks of hers for $13,500, which she had left to pay gambling losses. She had been there, they said, with Will Rogers, Marie Dressier and Actor Rex Bell. While Miss Bow was denying she had gambled, Will Rogers, onetime Mayor of Beverly Hills, where gambling is forbidden, said: "I don't suppose it's going to hurt my reputation much for people to know I've been in a gambling house. Clara wasn't gambling much while I was there. Her boyfriend Rex Bell is a real nice fellow. They had dinner with me and I paid the check. You can eat as well as gamble in that hotel. It's quite a place. Maybe I sort of introduced Clara, but I don't think so; it would have been like introducing Her bert Hoover to the Senate. Everyone knew her."

Said Clara Bow: "I was gypped. I played a little game called blackjack. I thought the chips were for 50-c-. They were for $100. Anyway, my lawyer told me you can't collect a gambling debt in Nevada."

The Spoilers (Paramount). There is not the slightest semblance of reality about this old one. Selig made it the first time in 1913. Goldwyn made it again in 1923. It is robust hokum about a handsome young prospector who has enemies, gold mines, a girl. At the end the villain and the hero put on the fight that has made cinema history. William Farnum and Tom Santschi did it in the Selig version. No one had ever seen such gouging and hair pulling, such proper, realistic punches and kicks. In the Goldwyn piece the fighters were the late Milton Sills and Noah Beery. This time William Boyd of the stage and Gary Cooper knock each other around for ten minutes. They do it better than Sills and Beery, perhaps less earnestly than Farnum and Santschi.

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