The New Pictures

No Man of Her Own (Paramount). A Manhattan gambler, hard-pressed by the police, selects a hideaway by stabbing a time table with a pencil. In the sleepy village of Glendale he comes upon a beautiful librarian who is yearning for metropolitan excitements. He decides, on the flip of a coin, to marry her, takes her back to town with him. By the time the picture is over, hardboiled Babe Stewart is no longer a gambler. Reformed by his gay little librarian, he has voluntarily served three months in jail, is in a fair way to become--for him a step up in the world --a customer's man.

Aside from being a harmless, rapid, amusing little program picture, No Man of Her Own will recommend itself to a large portion of the cinema public because Babe Stewart, the gambler, is Clark Gable, borrowed from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to play opposite Carole Lombard. Typical shot: Gable--whose animal appeal is abated somewhat by a constant sucking at his teeth--persuading Miss Lombard to climb a ladder in her library so that he can admire her from below.

The Animal Kingdom (RKO) is a story about a high-strung young publisher who deserts his deserving mistress to marry a designing wife; and who goes back to the mistress when he realizes that his wife has been using her physical appeal to make him betray his esthetic ideals in favor of mundane advantages which she considers more important. What gave Author Barry's idea its novelty when it was successfully produced as a play last year was the fact that the roles usually assigned to wife and mistress in such a triangle were reversed. Under the sharp beam of a projection machine, it becomes apparent that this novelty was the principal virtue of The Animal Kingdom. As Tom Collier's designing wife, Myrna Loy is attractive enough to make you believe that Collier would desert a mistress for her; attractive enough to make you believe that he is likely to do it again. Another thing which, by making Tom Collier's predicament more lifelike, makes his final decision less plausible, is the deletion of many funny lines which Author Barry wrote for the mistress. Ann Harding is left with the bare essentials of a role which requires her to walk up & down her studio apartment being too arduously brave.

The picture deserves inspection for the fun of watching adroit impersonations by the male members of the cast. Leslie Howard is Tom Collier. In response to a comment on the cold weather, he says, "I think we'd better bring the brass monkeys indoors tonight," so smoothly that the Hays organization allowed the line to stay. William Gargan is Collier's ex-pugilist butler. Funniest scene is when Gargan, drunk, tries to get up courage to resign while Collier tries to get up courage to discharge him. Mr. Rothafel selected The Animal Kingdom as the first attraction at the RKO Roxy theatre, which opened its doors in Rockefeller Center last week two days after the monster Radio City Music Hall (TIME, Jan. 2). The

RKO-Roxy contained 3,700 seats (compared to 'the Music Hall's 6,200), the heaviest and largest chandelier in the world (compared to the Music Hall's two longest), an auditorium designed in chaste taste to resemble the inside of a hatbox; a typical Roxy stage show, with a fan dance by Roxyettes.

The Son-Daughter (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) is distinguishable from most Chinatown pictures by 1) a curiously assorted cast and 2) an unhappy ending. In San Francisco, representatives of a Chinese revolutionist have pledged themselves to send him $100,000. To do this they decide to auction off their daughters for $25,000 each. Three of the daughters meet with mysterious misfortunes. The fourth and most beautiful, Lien Wha, persuades a rich Chinese gambler that she is worth the whole $100,000. This is most sad for brave Lien Wha; she is in love with a handsome young Chinese named Tom Lee. It is giving away no secret to explain that Tommy Lee turns out to be a Chinese prince; and that the gambler is a criminal called The Sea Crab who, also concerned with patriotic problems, hopes to prevent the $100,000 from finding its way to China and to murder the prince. He succeeds in one of his objectives.

The casting of The Son-Daughter, originally listed as a Joan Crawford picture, sounds like a triumph of mismanagement but it works out surprisingly well. Helen Hayes has to struggle a little with her role as Lien Wha but she manages to give it pathos and simplicity. Tom Lee is Ramon Novarro with his sideburns shaved off far above his ears. The rest of a strikingly Caucasian cast plays in the tradition for oriental melodrama--keeping the right hand in the left coat sleeve and saying little. Warner Oland as the Chinese gambler seems most at home in his surroundings. He gives out a few aphorisms left over from his performances as Charlie Chan and wears his hair in a braid so long that it serves as a queue for the most exciting scene in the picture--when Helen Hayes wraps it around his throat and pulls it tight.

Second Hand Wife (Fox). Kathleen Xorris, who wrote the novel on which this cinema is based, made an office girl's love for her boss interesting because the girl did not know that the boss's wife (Helen Vinson) had stopped loving her husband. So long as Hamilton MacFadden, who directed and adapted the picture, follows this simple theme, fair program entertainment results. But after Office Girl (Sally Eilers) has married Boss (Ralph Bellamy) the triangle is rearranged as a maudlin contest between Bellamy and Helen Vinson for custody of their violin-playing prodigy daughter (Karol Kay). The picture as cut for its Hollywood preview included a scene which for its power to embarrass the audience took rank with anything recently produced by the cinema--Miss Eilers pressing to her lips various portions of a layette, including baby-shoes. Her baby died soon after birth, filling her with jealousy of her husband's exwife. To conquer her jealousy she cooperates with her husband to make Miss Vinson, by a legal technicality, give up custody of Karol Kay. Best shots: the constrained, terrified grimaces of tiny Karol Kay who, whether playing her violin or precociously stealing scenes from Eilers and Bellamy, reveals unconsciously and unforgettably just what it means to be a real child prodigy.

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