Little Cinema

In January 1728, John Gay's The Beggar's Opera, "most successful piece ever produced on the English stage," was performed for the first time, in London. On its 205th birthday, The Beggar's Opera was performed in Manhattan last week in a French cinema version called L'Opera de Quat' Sons, with music by German Composer Kurt Weill, Victorian settings. Last week's showing of L'Opera de Quat' Sous was interesting for other than sentimental reasons. Famed George Wilhelm Pabst who directed it also made a German version of The Beggar's Opera (Die Drei-groschenoper) of which censored portions were shown in the U. S. two years ago. Last week's U. S. premiere of L'Opera de Quat' Sous, which like Die Dreigroschenoper was vastly successful in Europe, was also the premiere of a newly born organization called the Film Society.

Purpose of the Film Society is to show to a limited group of members, who pay $12 a year to see ten Sunday evening performances, cinemas of esthetic merit which, because of censors or lack of popular appeal, are not exhibited in commercial cinemansions. Sponsors include George Gershwin, Eva Le Gallienne, Leopold Stokowski, John Dos Passos, Sherwood Anderson, Norman Bel Geddes, Nelson Rockefeller. Organized not for profit but for "the study, research and development of film art." the Society initiated a trend which is the cinema equivalent of the Little Theatre movement. Already it has a lusty rival: the Film Forum, headed by Playwright Sidney Howard, which last fortnight gave as its first presentation the German picture M, directed by Fritz Lang. Vaguely pinkish in political tone, the Film Forum hopes to use a profit from its admission rate of $5 for six pictures, for producing "documentary" films of its own.

The New Pictures

Hello, Everybody! (Paramount). Hollywood was upset last week by the financial crashing of two major producing companies, Paramount and RKO (see p. 46). A reason often advanced for the difficulties of cinema producers is radio. Hello, Everybody! is an obvious attempt to attract the radio public by exhibiting one of radio's most popular performers, huge Kate Smith, whose saccharine contralto has for two years been the mainstay of the La Palina cigar broadcast.

Produced on the clear assumption that radio listeners are even less intelligent than cinemaddicts, Hello, Everybody! does not even ask its audiences to imagine Kate Smith as anyone except Kate Smith. She is shown first on a farm, crooning to the horses and pigs, joking with the hired man. When a power company threatens to build a dam that will destroy the arable land for miles around, Kate Smith (Kate Smith) accepts an offer to croon professionally to get money to fight the power company in court. The latter part of the picture shows Kate Smith broadcasting in Manhattan, contains close-ups of her porcine countenance illuminated by spurious geniality as she intones her trademark ("Hello Everybody") and her lugubrious theme song ("When the moon comes over the mountain, Ooom. . . ."). Sample farm song:

It came from nowhere the night that we met,

'Twas like a melodious plea,

Sweet Moon Song (that wasn't meant for me).

Why is it always reminding me of

A love dream that never could be,

Sweet Moon Song (that wasn't meant for me).

Hello Everybody!, smartly produced for a moron public, is a shrewd and interesting experiment, a milestone in an astonishing U. S. career. Katherine Elizabeth Smith was born in 1909 in Greenville, Va., where her father ran a general store. She grew up fatly, not on a farm but in Washington, D. C. She liked to sing but never practiced, took lessons or learned to read music. During the War she exercised her already voluminous treble at entertainments for soldiers. She was studying to be a nurse when Funnyman Eddie Dowling happened to be in Keith's Theatre one night when she was substituting on a vaudeville program. He incorporated her laugh-getting bulk into his musicomedy, Honeymoon Lane. After two more stage engagements--Hit the Deck, Flying High --huge Kate Smith got her first radio program, for Fleischmann's Yeast.

As a broadcaster, Kate Smith was clever enough to project her fat (212 Ib.) personality as well as her rich, loud voice. She helped write the lyric for "When the Moon Comes over the Mountain," saw to it that every letter she received got a sweet answer, inaugurated the trick of dedicating her programs to correspondents in hospitals, orphan asylums, jails, as well as to her mother. In 1931 she received 228 votes in a popularity poll of radio editors, to 78 for her closest competitor. In 1931 she played eleven weeks at Manhattan's Palace Theatre, made a record-breaking vaudeville tour, got more fan mail than any of the other radio performers who appeared in Paramount's first picture tor radio audiences, The Big Broadcast. Now, at 23, Kate Smith's income varies from $10,000 to $15,000 a week. She supports her aged mother and a 90-lb. sister who is a clerk in the Department of Justice. She lives in a Manhattan penthouse, ascribes her success to the shrewd diligence of her manager, Ted Collins, who also appears briefly in Hello, Everybody! (as himself). She likes prize fights, ball games, tennis, backgammon, owns seven toothbrushes and a La Salle roadster, wears tortoise-shell glasses, keeps her weight up by gobbling frosted chocolates.

Parachute Jumper (Warner). It would be unfair as well as inaccurate to suggest that slick young Douglas Fairbanks Jr. has suddenly slipped into his father's spry boots, but the kind of people who used to like the pictures Douglas Fairbanks Sr. made are likely to enjoy this one. Like most post-talkie adventure stories, it concerns airplanes instead of flying carpets, dope-smuggling instead of duelling. Fairbanks Jr. is first a pilot in the Marine Corps, then aeronautical henchman for a narcotics smuggler (Leo Carrillo) whom he innocently mistakes for a 'legger. Bette Davis supplies the love interest.

The one definite novelty required by all adventure stories--in this case, almost incessant parachute jumping--was supplied by the Associated Motion Picture Pilots, a group of oldtimers who do almost all the dangerous stunt flying required by the cinema industry. Two of the flyers in Parachute Jumper are Lieutenant Clinton Herberger, whose membership in the Caterpillar Club is No. 139; Ira Reed, who was also an anonymous principal in Hell's Angels, The Dawn Patrol.

State Fair (Fox). If you have never been to a state fair in Iowa and want to know what one is like, this picture will give you all the details. It starts on the day that the Frake family sets off on its annual outing. Abel Frake (Will Rogers) drives the truck. Melissa Frake (Louise Dresser) sits beside him, holding jars of her best mincemeat and pickles. Behind them their children, Wayne (Norman Foster) and Margy (Janet Gaynor) peer moodily at the flat road, the dim level fields. Behind the children, grunting and gurgling in his pen, lies Blue Boy, the fine fat Hampshire boar with which Abel Frake expects to win a prize.

At the fair, Blue Boy takes sick and refuses even to stand until he catches sight of a sleek sow in the next pen. Young Wayne gets the best of a concessionaire who had trimmed him the year before. Also he is seduced by an acrobat (Sally Filers). This leaves Margy to roam around the fair grounds alone and doing so she falls in with a young newspaper man (Lew Ayres). As you might expect, it all turns out for the best. Blue Boy's sow deserts him temporarily but reappears in time to invigorate him for the final judging. Blue Boy wins first prize, then engages in a startling fight with the second best boar. The acrobat is nice enough to decide that she is not nice enough to marry Wayne Frake. When Melissa Frake wins first prize not only for her mincemeat but for two different kinds of pickles, she nearly knocks herself down with her palm-leaf fan. Margy's beau takes her down to the trotting races and the horse he bets on wins. When the Frakes get home from the fair, Abel Frake is ready to collect a wager from the town storekeeper (Frank Craven) who gloomily predicted that at least one of the family would come back unhappy.

As a genre picture of an Iowa farm family, State Fair is certainly as successful as Philip Dumeld Stong's good novel from which it was adapted. The lush sentiment which usually creeps into Fox pictures produced by Winfield Sheehan sometimes becomes a shade too noticeable. On the other hand, Will Rogers refrains from philosophizing and Janet Gaynor, with her wistfulness under full control, gives a charming performance. Good shot: Melissa Frake conquering her conscience to pour apple brandy into her mincemeat.

She Done Him Wrong (Paramount). No longer can importance be attached to Tsar Hays's unequivocal ban on Diamond Lil, Mae West's bawdy, realistic, highly successful New York play. Lil, called by a new name, is just as sweet a rose and just as wild. Possibly Paramount is saving the better title for a less worthy picture.

She Done Him Wrong is the same tale of an 1898 Bowery flower that was picked often but did not wilt. Impersonated by Mae West, she thrives and collects diamonds with each picking. Mae is picked up by the story as the chatelaine of Noah Beery, a trusting old fellow who runs a cabaret and modest little white slave business. Having a bit of time to spare Mae befriends a young would-be suicidess, visits some ex-beaus who are taking the cure at Sing Sing, juggles with the attentions of Gigolo Gilbert Roland, Racketeer David Landau and Salvation Army Captain Gary Grant. Complications begin when Beery hijacks the suicidess for his Barbary Coast trade, when Mae plants a dirk in the gigolo's mistress. Simultaneously the Salvationist has been ascertaining to his own satisfaction that his Mae means well. By the time he turns out to be the famous detective he has disposed of such of Mae's dubious companions as she has left alive. Off they go for the parson, the moral apparently being that the Lord helps those who express themselves.

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