The New Pictures

Of Human Bondage (Radio-Keith-Orpheum).

Somerset Maugham wrote this long novel of a cripple in unworthy love in 1915. Since then the book has sold some 300,000 copies and firmly established itself as a modern masterpiece. For years Hollywood has eyed it as a mighty challenge to the cinema's capacity to transfer literature to the screen without losing its precious essence. But there were real difficulties: Would the public accept a clubfooted hero? What was to be done with a love story involving a young man's revulsion from his baser instincts? How could a hateful shrew of a girl be portrayed by any actress known to Holly wood? As a practical answer to these questions. Of Human Bondage is a good picture taken from a great book.

Director John Cromwell's version of Maugham's novel starts when Philip Carey (Leslie Howard) learns in Pans that he is a mediocre painter, makes up his mind to study medicine in London. Near the end of the picture Carey under goes an operation which cures his clubfoot. Director Cromwell and Lester Cohen, who adapted the story, took the intelligent course of deviating as little as possible from Somerset Maugham's narrative. Therefore the most memorable and important part of Of Human Bondage remains Philip's attachment for Mildred Rogers (Bette Davis), the waitress who turns prostitute before her death from tuberculosis. The first time Philip and Mildred go out together, he gayly buys a bottle of champagne. When she leaves him for Emil Miller (Alan Hale) he follows them to a theatre, watches them drive off together in a taxi. When she comes back for the second time after a Paris jaunt with his fellow medical student (Reginald Denny), she moves into Philip's rooms. Audiences in Manhattan last week were sufficiently impressed to applaud when Philip finally finds Mildred horrible enough to say calmly: "You disgust me!" Enraged, Mildred screams abuse at Philip, ends with the most dreadful insult she can think of: "You cripple!" If the final sequences showing Philip becoming engaged to a decent wholesome girl suggest the standard pattern of a happy ending it is because Author Maugham wrote his story that way.

The most surprising thing about Of Human Bondage is not that it was made so well but that it was made at all. That this version possesses much of the patience and clarity of Author Maugham's writing is by no means due entirely to a fine performance by Leslie Howard. The rest of the cast acts with the authority and response which, more than any obvious and showy tricks, are the sign of good directing. Bette Davis, in the first part she has ever had which has required more than handsome clothes and an enigmatic expression, makes Mildred almost as unpleasant to see as she was to imagine.

When Bette (pronounced "Betty") Davis went to summer camp, she was thrown into the water daily to wash the mascara from her eyebrows. They are naturally black. Her hair is ash blonde, dyed pale yellow; her enormous eyes, blue. This combination caused Carl Laemmle Jr. to decline to hire her; he considered her appearance unattractive. Born in Lowell Mass., in 1908, Bette Davis grew up in Boston, went to Manhattan in 1927 to study acting under John Murray Anderson, got her start in a Provincetown Theatre production. After two seasons in Manhattan plays, she secured a Universal contract, playing bits until George Arliss selected her for The Man Who Played God (1932). Since then she has worked up to the position of star in pictures like So Big, The Rich Are Always With Us, Dark Horse, 20,000 Years in Sing Sing, Cabin in the Cotton, Ex-Lady. Her roles were usually those of a young lady with simple notions and sophisticated manners. Christened Ruth Elizabeth Davis, she coined her own stage name when she was 12, by misspelling Betty. When she arrived in Hollywood she was called a "school girl Constance Bennett." She learns a part by glancing through it once or twice, wears glasses when she reads, usually goes to sleep at parties. Her husband is Harmon O. ("Ham") Nelson Jr., bandleader at Hollywood's Colony Club. They went to school together, met again at the 1932 Olympic Games. Davis joke: "Ham is a good egg." Born in a thunderstorm, Bette Davis now considers rainstorms lucky. She is 5 ft. 3 in. tall, weighs 106 Ib. Her figure is insured for $50,000.

The Thin Man (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer).

At the beginning of this picture, Nick Charles (William Powell) says to one of his favorite bartenders: "A dry martini should be shaken to waltz time." This conceit is the most disputable bit of deductive reasoning which Nick Charles executes in the course of The Thin Man. A retired detective, in Manhattan for a holiday with his charming wife (Myrna Loy), he finds himself drawn by circumstance into trying to solve the sudden disappearance of an eccentric inventor, whose mistress has been found murdered. When the inventor's watch-chain is discovered in the dead woman's hand, when the only possible witness to the crime is found murdered also, a dull-witted police operator (Pat Pendleton) surmises that the inventor committed both crimes. While gayly consuming enormous quantities of whiskey and gin, Nick Charles chats with the inventor's mercenary wife, his pretty daughter, his neurotic son. an assortment of thugs, lawyers and policemen, suavely verifies his hunch that the inventor is entirely innocent.

In The Thin Man, as in Dashiell Hammett's novel from which the picture wa derived, the humor is inherent in the characters, who appear against a background of recognizably real life in Manhattan's alleys, barrooms and hotels. When a thug who thinks he may be arrested for the murder enters the Charles suite and draws his gun. Nick Charles fetches his wife a clip on the jaw to remove her from the line of fire, throws a pillow at the gunman, escapes with a flesh wound. Dismayed at missing the excitement. Mrs. Charles next day scornfully gives Nick a popgun for a Christmas present. Almost as engaging as Mr. and Mrs. Charles is their fox-terrier Asta. Equipped with a sharp nose which eventually helps solve the mystery, he gets a Christmas present also: a rubber lamp post.

Kiss and Make-Up (Paramount).

Cinemagoers who see the last part of this picture before the first may mistake its mood. It ends with a ridiculous taxi-chase through Paris streets, with a jar of ether, a toupee and a hutch of rabbits as laugh-getters. Actually Kiss and Make-Up is a voluptuous farce which pretends to probe the beauty business. A handsome beautician (Gary Grant) does such a good job on a client (Genevieve Tobin) that her husband (Edward Everett Horton) divorces her. Lured into marriage, Grant discovers that her beauty interferes with his peace of mind, her diet with his meals, her sensitive skin with his swimming, her cleansing cream with his lovemaking. Meanwhile Horton has taken up with Grant's secretary, a winsome miss with a shiny nose. When Grant tires of Beauty his great object is to get the secretary back. She is so near marrying Horton that it takes the taxi-chase to wind matters up. Fitted with a deft, continuous musical background. Kiss and Make-Up is gaudy, amusing, well-acted. Typical gag: Horton remarking that in India a man notifies his wife of his intention to divorce her by placing a betel nut under her pillow; and crisply adding: "And so, madame, betel nuts to you."

The World Moves On (Fox).

In 1825, the New Orleans Girards form a cotton partnership with their English associates, the Warburtons, with family controlled branches in Germany and France. In 1914, the Girards and Warburtons hold a reunion in Potsdam. During the War, a German Girard, commanding a submarine, sinks a liner on which are a U. S. Girard and a Warburton. Richard Girard (Franchot Tone) marries Mary Warburton (Madeleine Carroll), who had been engaged to his German cousin. After the War, Richard overextends the Girard cotton dynasty. In 1929, all the Girards collapse, but the Warburton branch holds the family interests together. Richard and Mary scuttle back to New Orleans where their old retainer (Stepin Fetchit) welcomes them with whimpers.

Written by Reginald Berkeley, directed by John Ford, produced by Winfield Sheehan, The World Moves On struggles hard to be an epic. It succeeds in being a tedious two hour summary of Berkeley Square, Cavalcade and The House of Rothschild. Worst shot: a newsreel flash of Hitler reviewing Nazi troops--to emphasize Mary Warburton's announcement, at a business conference, that she expects to have a baby.

Baby, Take A Bow (Fox) is carried almost single-handed by hardworking, hard-worked 4-year-old Shirley Temple. Three months ago Fox discovered that she was excellent adult entertainment in the otherwise mediocre Stand Up And Cheer. Immediately Paramount borrowed her for Little Miss Marker. While this picture was proving a thumping box office success all over the country. Fox ground out Baby, Take a Bow. For the sweatshop pace which has pushed Shirley Temple through an average year's work in four months they had a good business-like reason: growing children shoot overnight into gangling youngsters.

Important only in that it plots another point in the life-graph of a curly-headed little girl, Baby, Take a Bow "makes a third-rate farce out of the adventures of a reformed ex-convict (James Dunn), whose daughter (Shirley Temple) unwittingly helps him dispose of a stolen pearl necklace which has been planted in his apartment.

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