The New Pictures

As difficult as balancing the U. S. budget is the task of devising cinema plots in which opera stars may be induced to perform less self-consciously than opera stars. Last week two of Hollywood's attempts to skirt this problem appeared, with varying success.

Hitting a New High (RKO Radio). One of the few opera stars who can wear a feather skirt to obvious advantage is diminutive, fluty Lily Pons. A shrewd producer like Jesse L. Lasky, having seen petite Miss Pons in the gold brassiere and flowered wrap-around skirt of Lakme, could see at a glance that there was more in Miss Pons than met the ear. When Suzette (Lily Pons), singing in Paris with a jazz band, declares "It is to sing in opera that I would give my shirt," it is therefore not surprising that she should indeed trade her shirt, etc. for a brief costume of feathers and a habitat in darkest Africa. Her purpose, inspired by Pressagent Corny Davis (Jack Oakie), is to catch the attention of Talent Scout Lucius B. Blynn (Edward Everett Horton), in Africa on a big-game-hunting vacation.

Deep in the jungle, Bring 'Em Back Blynn discovers the bird-girl warbling away in the midst of an enthusiastic chorus of birds. Any opera scout but one named Lucius B. Blynn would have recognized the tune as Saint-Saens' Nightingale song. Caught in a bamboo cage, she is taken to the U. S., twittering bird notes to a feathered crony named Ewyscray, venturing Gallic asides to Press-agent Jack Oakie. Before the ensuing complications are ironed out, the bird-girl trains her upper-register fluidity on the Mad Scene from Lucia di Lammermoor, on Je suis Titania from Mignon, on two less classical numbers entitled Let's Give Love Another Chance and (as Miss Pons says) 'Itting a New 'Igh.

On the theory that music alone hath not sufficient box-office charm, the producers stuffed the picture with best-selling comedy commodities. In view of the Paris background, the film has still another distinction : the Eiffel Tower does not appear until the second reel.

I'll Take Romance (Columbia). Tennessee's soprano, Cinemactress Grace Moore, recently braved wisecracks by showing up in Manhattan with a big, tasty Tennessee ham in her arms (TIME, Dec. 13). Though her new film invites no such unkind wisecracks, neither does it bring home any bacon.

Lacking a feather-skirted heroine (see above), I'll Take Romance follows a familiar cinema routine, its guiding milestones clearly visible from the outset. All along the dusty way are conveniently spaced settings for the Drinking Song from La Traviata, the duet from Madame Butterfly, the finale to the third act of Martha, the Gavotte from Manon and the Old Red Rooster arietta from She'll Be Comin' 'round the Mountain. The title song is a sweet-and-dreamy for the radio groundlings.

The question is how to get Prima Donna Elsa Terry (Grace Moore) from Manhattan to the Argentine, to fulfill an engagement in Buenos Aires. Her faded diva aunt (Helen Westley) insists that she go to Paris instead. Up from the pampas come Emissary James Guthrie (Melvyn Douglas) and his stooge, "Pancho" Brown (Stuart Erwin), who lay siege to Elsa with flowers, gifts, attentions. When Elsa discovers what seems to be a ring of cold business in Guthrie's honeydew phrases. the plot bears to the left, but the clairvoyant audience knows it will come right again.

With an eye to variety, Director Edward H. Griffith slipped in several enlivening touches of his own. The best: Low-brow Erwin, rolling dice on his program during the performance of Martha, finds neighbors on both sides of him eager to play, turns up snake eyes to complete his dismal evening.

Boy of the Streets (Monogram), an anguished story of the slums, has moments of real understanding, but their effectiveness is lost in a confused effort to tidy up social injustice with a Lady Bountiful, a few rolls of wall paper, and the U. S. Navy. The burly boy of the streets is Jackie Cooper. A piping Skippy at 8, he is now 14, passes, with adolescent gruffness, for 16 in the film. Trying to get away from the slums, Jackie gets involved with gangsters, and when he finds little honor among thieves, joins the Navy. Meanwhile, a dark-eyed benefactress (Kathleen Burke) pretties up one of the tenements, brightens the lives of the boy's down-at-heels father (Guy Usher), his toneless, defeated mother (Marjorie Main) and the little girl in the next flat (Maureen O'Connor), who sings pathetic songs in the voice of a younger, fresher Helen Morgan. Actress Main won wide acclaim for her portrayal of "Babyface" Martin's mother in the stage and screen versions of Dead End. Cinema newcomer Maureen O'Connor is a radio veteran at 14.

Boy of the Streets takes off from the same social springboard as Dead End's, but misses its footing, comes a belly-whopper.

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