The New Pictures

Dimples (Twentieth Century-Fox). Dimples Appleby (Shirley Temple) lives with her grandfather (Frank Morgan), a lovable, broken-down actor. A rich old lady (Helen Westley) wants to provide Dimples with what that little girl calls a better "envinament." The struggle implicit in this situation is amicably adjusted when Dimples wins acclaim as Little Eva in a production of Uncle Tom's Cabin, in which her grandfather, under cork, disguises himself as Tom.

Cinemactress Temple's public, still bigger than that of any adult cinemactress, should be delighted by this pre-Civil War period piece directed by William Seiter.

Miss Temple is seven. Still apparently untouched by the years -- three since her cinema career began -- she steals scenes from two oldtime stage mimes, dances, sings, mugs shamelessly on Little Eva's death bed. Kindest shot: the back of Frank Morgan's head when Shirley, her arms twined around his neck, is sobbing out an embarrassingly sentimental ballad called Picture Me Without You.

Valiant is the Word for Carrie (Paramount) restores to circulation that fine old institution of the U. S. entertainment business, the noble prostitute. To the cottage on the outskirts of Crebillon, La.

where Carrie (Gladys George) lives, little Paul Darnley (Jackie Moran), who has a sick mother and a sadist father, goes for sympathy which Carrie gives him. Forced to leave town, she returns after Paul is orphaned, takes him and a girl waif called Lady (Charlene Wyatt) to live in New York. Ten years later, a dry-cleaning business has made Carrie rich. Paul (John Howard) is a literary agent and Lady (Arline Judge) hopes to be his bride.

At this point, trying to save Paul from a scheming blonde, Carrie gets into a predicament from which she cannot escape without revealing all her shady past. She prefers jail to dishonor, and is in one when the picture ends.

Recently as rare as the redskin, the noble prostitute was once a cinema favorite. Carrie Snyder, as impersonated with enormous gusto and skill by Actress Gladys George, famed for her Broadway success in Personal Appearance, rates with the noblest of them all. If intelligence counts, Carrie is better than Madelon Claudet, who sank to scrubbing floors; she certainly deserves the nod over Madame X, who forfeited her own flesh and blood. The rating of Valiant is the Word for Carrie against other noble-prostitute pictures is equally favorable. Adapted from Barry Benefield's novel, astutely directed by Wesley Ruggles, it is a slick, high-powered old-school tearjerker, guaranteed to please exhibitors by making their patrons miserable. Typical shot: Carrie, on the point of a business foray into Times Square, restrained by the squeaky voice of little Lady, asking what she is up to.

Ladies in Love (Twentieth Century-Fox). Three girls took an apartment together in Budapest. They counted the corners of the room and then -- as the proverb told them to -- sat down to make a wish. Martha (Janet Gaynor) wished for some one to love and look after. She was a little War-ruined Baroness who had learned to make a living selling neckties in the street and who also fed cabbage leaves to the experimental rabbits of Dr. Rudi Imre.

One night in the theatre she was picked from the audience to assist in a trick by Sandor the Great. Thereafter she brought Sandor his breakfast every morning, at tended to his clothes, put him to bed when drunk, listened to his egocentric maunderings, massaged his hands, tied his ties, for which he allowed her 15 kronen weekly and the privilege of falling in love with him. He might even have done her the honor of a seduction if she had not told him what he liked about her hair was egg shampoo. Just in time were her eyes opened by sage Dr. Imre. Then she saw that Sandor the Great was just as much of an illusion as one of his own tricks.

Susie (Loretta Young) wished to be ndependent of men. She was not thinking if the wish when she gave herself to Karl Lenyi, although she knew he was engaged. Her contribution to his happiness consisted, after she had been cast off, in saving his fiancee from an unpleasant scene.

It was then that she attempted to find ndependence in an overdose of sleeping powder. Martha got the glass instead.

Yoli (Constance Bennett) wished for a rich husband. She made clear to John Barta (Paul Lukas) that they were to keep emotion from spoiling their fun together. She did not know that John had returned from a South American mining camp to find a wife, but Marie (Simone Simon) knew. It was Marie who went back to the Andes with John. Yoli had a rich man handy but by now she did not want him.

These are the bare bones of a distinguished and rich picture, not gloomy in spite of its realism, not episodic in spite of its multiple narrative. Excellently adapted by Melville Baker from the play by Ladislaus Bus-Fekete, it moves with the same swift alternations of gayety and sadness as the Hungarian waltzes with which it is scored. Janet Gaynor gets top acting honors in spite of a strong bid by dynamic little Simone Simon.

The Gay Desperado (Pickford-Lasky) is that extraordinary rarity, a musical comedy which is both musical and comic. It almost infringes upon Hollywood's iron law that all singing pictures must be about singers and it makes the demise of the partnership between Mary Pickford and Jesse Lasky--which started with One Rainy Afternoon (TIME, May 4) and ended last month--seem definitely regrettable.

Inspired by his contemplation of U. S.

gangster films, Mexican Bandit Braganza (Leo Carrillo) sets out to appropriate their methods. A music lover, his first move is to draft the services of Chivo (Nino Martini), a likely young tenor.

When he has terrorized a radio station into permitting Chivo to attain his ambition to broadcast a rendering of Celeste Aida, Braganza gives the recruit a chance to win his spurs by kidnapping a young U. S.

couple eloping through the wastelands in a Rolls-Royce runabout. An utter failure as a bandit, Chivo lets the young man escape so that he can be alone with the young lady (Ida Lupino). Braganza's sinister lieutenant favors killing him for this but Braganza is so charmed by the aria with which Chivo greets his firing squad that he spares his life. By this time whatever ingredients of plot The Gay Desperado originally possessed have frothed over into pure parody which is as amusing as it is unexpected.

Within the next decade, some producer, goaded to desperation by the need for a new variation of the career plot, will doubtless electrify the motion picture industry by utilizing those conventions, immemorial in stage musical shows and grand opera, whereby career plots are totally unnecessary. Until then, The Gay Desperado should supply a working model for future efforts in its genre. Good shot: a Mexican girl trio singing Lookie, Lookie Lookie, Here Comes Cookie. Libeled Lady (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). Adapting a story which is to be played by four top-ranking film personalities is a problem in tact as well as dramaturgy. The roles have to be "balanced" to eliminate jealousies on the part of the players, disappointments for the members of the audience who become annoyed if a favorite is slighted. In Libeled Lady the balancing is done with as much precision as if the roles had been weighed in an apothecary's scales.

Haggerty (Spencer Tracy) is managing editor of a paper which has incurred a $5,000,000 suit by saying, erroneously, that Connie Allenbury (Myrna Loy) is a husband-stealer. To defeat the suit, the paper employs a professional libel-suit-blaster, Bill Chandler (William Powell). He is to go to England, come back on a steamer with Miss Allenbury, win her affections during the voyage or at least compromise her to such an extent that his wife can sue for alienation, thus supplying foundation for the paper's original contention. Flaw in the setup: Chandler has no wife. Remedy: Haggerty has him marry Gladys (Jean Harlow) although Gladys feels and states that Chandler is a baboon, and although she had, when the proceedings began, been momentarily expecting to marry Haggerty. What happens is that Chandler falls in love with Connie, while Gladys falls in love with Chandler. After some devious emotional juggling and a sidesplitting scene between William Powell and a trout, the foursome relaxes into its normal lineup, the audience into a slight fog as to who really is married to whom.

Produced by Lawrence Weingarten, able brother-in-law of the late Irving Thalberg, Libeled Lady is what is known as a ''natural," i.e. a story sure to be a box office hit, worth any conceivable amount that might be spent producing it. It is directed at breakneck speed by Jack Conway, plentifully supplied with lighthearted lines. Sample: "He can't marry her, that's arson."

The Big Broadcast of 1937 (Paramount) is Film Producer Lewis E. Gensler's idea of a world of radio whose chief characteristics are bad manners and diligent idiocy. It is considerably poorer stuff than the two previous Big Broadcasts.

Like its predecessors, The Big Broadcast of 1937 tries to weave a vast number of disassociated vaudeville and radio acts into a slim story about a performer from the sticks (Shirley Ross) who makes good on the big time despite heavy odds. On view during her rise to success are Jack Benny, Burns & Allen, Bob Burns and his bazooka. There is singing by Frank Forest, Benny Fields and Shirley Ross of some of Ralph Rainger's & Leo Robin's new tunes (La Bomba, I'm Talking Through My Heart, You Came To My Rescue, Here's Love In Your Eye), some of which will promptly be played to death by real radio stations.

Musically, the picture becomes most ambitious when Benny Goodman's band fades away before Bach's Ein feste Burg and Fugue in G-Minor played by an orchestra conducted by none other than Leopold Stokowski, making his cinematic debut in a way which may chill classicists,

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