The New Pictures

Lancer Spy (20th Century-Fox). Versatile Gregory Ratoff, who does not speak very good English but knows a great deal about making films, has a four-way contract with 20th Century-Fox to act, write, direct, supervise. Lancer Spy finds him a director for the first time, and he has contrived a swift, suspense-crammed screen translation of Marthe McKenna's thriller.

To link the World War background of Lancer Spy to the present, Director Ratoff employs the flashback technique--what they like to refer to as "narratage" on the Fox lot. The chief character is portrayed by George Sanders, whose rapid rise since his first screen role in last year's Lloyds of London is noted in an epilog to the film. In an outstanding job of dual characterization Sanders undertakes the roles of Lieut. Michael Bruce of the British Navy and Baron Kurt von Rohbach, a German prisoner to whom he bears a remarkable resemblance.

Lieut. Bruce schools himself in von Rohbach's mannerisms and background, undertakes an espionage assignment, impersonating the Baron. In Germany he becomes a national hero, arouses the jealousy and suspicion of blustery Colonel Hollevy (Sig Rumann) and his aide Major Gruning (Peter Lorre). Their efforts to trap him with the charms of a dancer (Dolores Del Rio) fail when General von Memhardi (Maurice Moscovitch) dies of a heart attack as he is about to appoint Bruce his liaison officer. Bruce steals plans for a planned military "push" from Memhardi's files escapes through Switzerland after an eventful flight through Germany, enables the Allies to attack first, turning the tide ot the War.

Gregory Ratoff has tried directing before but he is better known as a character actor with a dialect as thick and savory as Russian borscht. He also writes frequently for the screen (most recent cinemas: Cafe Metropole, You Can't Have Everything), ha. produced for the stage (The Kibitzer, Candlelight). Born in Samara, Russia, in 1897, he played in Russian touring companies until the World War, served on the Turkish border, fled with the White Army in 1918. While playing opposite Eugenie Leontovich (now Mrs. Ratoff) in Berlin, he was spotted by J. J. Schubert who hired them both, played them in no weeks of Blossom Time. David O. Selznick brought Ratoff to Hollywood. Year ago, when Ratoff got his final U. S. citizenship papers in Manhattan, he set up drinks for the courthouse press.

Stage Door (RKO Radio). Season ago, George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber spaced out a few antiquated notions about Hollywood with some of their niftiest interstices, used Manhattan's Rehearsal Club (53rd Street theatrical boarding house) for a locale, scored a Broadway success with the play Stage Door, with Margaret Sullavan, lured back from cinema, in tl lead Tolerant Hollywood backed it, bought the screen rights, let it run until Actress Sullavan (Mrs. Leland Hayward) was about to have her baby. Finding no other Hollywood actress available for the lead, the producers shut the play down early this year.

It came back last week in glossily finished celluloid, reshaped to Hollywood's uses by Play Doctors Anthony Veiller and Morrie Ryskind, superbly staged played acclaimed as a crushing rebuttal per se; of Kaufman-Ferber film-baiting. Not one to cry anything so banal as "Touche," Quipster Kaufman reputedly acknowledged the new Stage Door with dour originality. "Should have called it Screen Door," said he.

The Terry Randall of this new version is Katharine Hepburn. A stage-struck heiress, Terry arrives at the Footlight Club with a precise accent and pretty clothes, ambitious to be another Bernhardt. Replacing Hollywood as the villain is reliable Adolphe Menjou. playing the urbane Broadway Producer Anthony Powell, a man who has a coveted role in Enchanted April to bestow, and who is disposed toward mixing dalliance with casting problems. Linda Shaw (Gail Patrick), his early favorite, loses out to fiery Jean Maitland (Ginger Rogers). Terry outmaneuvers Jean, keeps Producer Powell on the level, wins the part, breaking the heart of Kaye Hamilton, who had never been able to show Powell what she could do.

As the Kaye Hamilton of the film, Andrea Leeds walks starry-eyed to her death in a scene which takes its place among the great expressionistic sequences of cinema legend. Kaye's despairing death transforms Terry into the great actress she has not been up to curtain time, leads to the tearful observation: "Does someone have to die to create an actress?"

Cinemagoers welcomed the return of Katharine Hepburn from farthingales and tippets, were agreeably surprised at Ginger Rogers' versatility. But the actress who nearly stole the show was Andrea Leeds. Graduate of the University of California at Los Angeles, tyro Leeds is 23, first appeared in films in a student production. Her chance came last year in Samuel Goldwyn's Come and Get It, another Edna Ferber contribution to the cinema. Her small part brought her fame because one day she had to kiss three men a total of 467 times during screen testing. Pressagents called her "Hollywood's Kiss Champion" (TIME. July 27. 1936), wangled page one breaks all over the U. S. with the story. As punishment for her refusal of a later part in Woman Chases Man, Mogul Goldwyn farmed her out to RKO Radio, quickly called her back from exile after her success there to participate in the Goldwyn Follies. Daughter of a mining engineer, her real name is Antoinette Lees. Between kisses and suicides she is a musician, writes publishable verse.

The Bride Wore Red (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). Few twists remain to the plot about Joan Crawford's brave but tortured heart and two boy friends. From the days of the mutely elemental struggles of the silent cinema, with lusties like John Gilbert and Ernest Torrence battling for her favor along Rum Row (Twelve Miles Out), through the promiscuous years of the early talkies (Laughing Sinners, This Modern Age), down to the whimsically urbane present (No More Ladies, The Last of Mrs. Cheyney), Miss Crawford has been the disciple of male multiplicity, the exponent of the huddle system in romance. With the matinee idols of each era grouped around her, she has flaunted her indecision in everything from a sarong to the latest Suzy.

This time there is grim, calculating bitterness in her saucer eyes as she steps out of a low Trieste cafe, heads for the elite Tyrol in chic borrowed clothes, out to prove that a Cinderella still has a chance if she wants to take it. After a fortnight of fittings for the glass slipper by Prince Charming Robert Young, her heart and a revealing telegram send her packing off at the cinemetaphorical stroke of midnight to wed Alpine Postman Franchot Tone.

The all-star groupings around Miss Crawford nowadays usually include her husband, Franchot Tone, and another ranking heart throb--Clark Gable (Love on the Run, Dancing Lady), Robert Montgomery (No More Ladies), Robert Young or Gary Cooper (Today We Live). Occasionally Husband Tone steps aside, leaving the field clear for one of the others (Forsaking All Others). Robert Young's return to fickle Crawford favor is perhaps due to his early season success with Claudette Colbert and Melvyn Douglas in I Met Him in Paris.

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