The New Pictures

The Green Pastures (Warner) is the nearest thing there is to modern U. S. folk drama. As a stage play, it ran for five years in 203 cities. There were 1,779 performances, approximately $3,000,000 receipts. As a creative work, it originated in the mind of Roark Bradford, whose stories in Ol' Man Adam an' His Chillun supplied the manner, mood and dialog. Roark Bradford's connection with The Green Pastures has since been overshadowed by that of Marc Connelly, who was shrewd enough to see a play in Ol' Man Adam and able enough, with Author Bradford's assistance, to adapt it. When The Green Pastures ended its marathon, Warner Brothers, eager to experiment with a Negro fantasy of Heaven as they had with musicomedy, Shakespeare and the chain gang, bought the cinema rights for $100,000. Last autumn Adapter Connelly went to Hollywood for further collaboration on The Green Pastures, this time to direct it with the help of William Keighley. Last month Warners decided to show the picture first in medium-size cities throughout the U. S., where they hope it will draw the major share of its receipts. Last week in Tulsa, Okla., where the play got its warmest reception, the film had its world premiere, started breaking box-office records.

As everyone knows, The Green Pastures is a projection of the dreamy imaginings aroused in the minds of his listeners by an aged colored preacher telling Old Testament stories to a children's Sunday School. One of the strong features of the play was the poverty-stricken bareness of the Heaven it portrayed. One of the principal dangers of the cinema was that Heaven would either be improved beyond any Southern pickaninny's dream or else that the artfulness of its simplicity might seem condescending. The producers have avoided both these pitfalls. Heaven has been improved, but only slightly.

In it, to be sure, dark angels cruise about on little clouds. From the clouds, they dangle lines for catfish. God is still a shabby Negro preacher, calm, elderly and not too competent. Brash young Gabriel announces him officiously at picnics, has to be sharply cautioned about tooting prematurely on his trumpet. On Earth, Cain kills Abel, Moses is frightened by the burning bush, Noah demands two kegs of whiskey for snake bite and balancing the Ark. In Heaven, female angels dust off the wooden chairs in Jehovah's office, Abraham's grandson rubs liniment on his wings. God supervises these and a thousand more lively happenings. He has notions what to do about the Earth but the notions do not often work. He is still puzzling when the picture ends.

Richard B. Harrison, who impersonated God in the stage version of The Green Pastures, died, aged 70, a few days after his 1,657th performance. A frail, decorous and dignified old veteran of hotel service, revival meetings, Chautauquas, Actor Harrison lived his last part offstage as well as on, received so much publicity that the words "de Lawd" followed his name as regularly as though they had been some sort of degree. His cinema successor, Rex Ingram, is a different sort. No patriarch, Actor Ingram is 40. Over 6 ft., 2 in. tall and 225 lb., he is sufficiently robust to have started his cinema career as a cannibal chief in Tarzan of the Apes.

Not to be confused with famed Director Rex Ingram (The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse), who is now retired from the cinema at his villa in Nice, Negro Actor Rex Ingram is the son of a 6-ft., 4-in. fireman on the Mississippi River boat Robert E. Lee. He was born, while his mother was hurrying home to Cairo. Ill., somewhere in the vicinity of Illinois, Missouri or Kentucky, christened Reginald Cliff Ingram. His family moved to Los Angeles when he was 7. Young Reginald Ingram was graduated from Urban military school, set off to work his way through Northwestern University. As to his career there, reports differ. Warner Brothers publicists insist that he was an "N" man at baseball, football, basketball and track, graduated with honors in 1919. Northwestern records show that he never went there at all. According to Warner's accounts, Actor Ingram possesses both a Phi Beta Kappa key and the degree of M.D. Since opportunities for Negro actors are limited and he can never hope for another as good as "de Lawd," he is quoted as saying he may now retire from public life, return to medicine, devote himself to good works among poor Negroes in the South. Actor Ingram currently admits that he is neither a Phi Beta Kappa nor a doctor of medicine, explains all such biographical discrepancies as misunderstandings which arose before he was sufficiently famed to make them worth correcting.

The more equivocal portions of the current "Lawd's" career ended when his career as a professional actor began in 1920. After receiving $10 for his performance as the cannibal chief, he played bit parts in pictures and in road companies of plays, made a reputation as Blacksnake in Stevedore. Most of Actor Ingram's early jobs were given him because of his impressive physique. In the cinema version of The Green Pastures, he was originally cast for the role of Adam, which amounts to two "sides" and a shot of Adam naked to the waist. While trying applicants for the role of God, Collaborator Connelly finally thought of Ingram, tested him in a beard, promptly decided he had enough poise for the part. Actor Ingram speaks with more vigor but no less dignity than his predecessor, doubles ably as Adam and the Prophet Hezdrel.

And Sudden Death (Paramount) takes its title from the article by Joseph Chamberlin Furnas on the evils of fast motoring which appeared in The Reader's Digest and has since, in a reprint by Simon & Schuster (after screen re-enactment in The March of Time for last October), reached a circulation of three million copies. It does not venture to translate into pictures much of the lusty and horrifying blood-reek of the article, but it does present, within conventional limits, an energetic little sermon on good highway manners. Lieutenant Knox (Randolph Scott), head of a police traffic department, meets Betty Winslow (Frances Drake) when she is arrested for driving 72 m.p.h. in a 30-m.p.h. zone. His efforts to educate her to caution involve a visit to the morgue and the exhibition of a police newsreel of traffic smashups. When her alcoholic brother Jackie (Tom Brown) smashes into a school bus, killing the young son of the cop who arrested her for speeding, she takes the blame and goes to jail for murder in the second degree. The denouement consists of Knox's successful efforts to force Jackie to admit his guilt. None of the crash scenes are stock shots. All were made by professional stunt people, strapped in the seats of the cars they wrecked.

Sins of Man (Twentieth Century-Fox). Sad, simple and superfluous, this picture depicts the mishaps of one Christopher Freyman (Jean Hersholt), bell ringer in the Tyrolean town of Zanebruck. Christopher's wife dies, his younger son is deaf & dumb, his elder son gets killed in a plane crash, Zanebruck is wiped out by a war bombardment and, by 1935, poor old Chris is no more than a Manhattan bottle-washer. His deaf son, cured by the roar of guns, then turns out to be a great composer, recognizable to his sire by a symphony, The Cathedral Most lugubrious shot: Chris and a friend (Allen Jenkins) making the jeering louts in a Bowery flophouse kneel down to pray.

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