The New Pictures

The Rage of Paris (Universal). While most of its major competitors were making large profits, Universal in its last fiscal year (ending October 30, 1937) lost over $1,000,000. What made this especially impressive was that it occurred in spite of Three Smart Girls, one of the big money-making pictures of the year, which grossed a total of nearly $2,000,000. Star of Three Smart Girls and two subsequent Universal hits is blithe, bouncing, 16-year-old Deanna Durbin. Suspecting that it needed, if not another Durbin, at least a running mate of comparable calibre, Universal acquired one, with the same lucky initials, in the noteworthy French person of 21-year-old Danielle Darrieux (Mayerling). The Rage of Paris introduces Mlle Darrieux to English-speaking audiences, is a frothy comedy designed to capitalize both her talent for wearing expensive clothes and her as yet imperfect English. Taking no unnecessary chances, the company assigned as her director Henry Koster, who in the first two Durbin pictures managed to emphasize the star's girlish naivete without letting it get completely out of hand. Result is a pleasingly preposterous little fable which, while more sophisticated than any of Miss Durbin's contributions, rivals them in its fresh and energetic charm.

Nicole (Danielle Darrieux), a job-seeking model, is assigned to pose for semi-nude photographs. She goes to the wrong address, starts to undress in the office of a cynical young businessman (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.), who not unnaturally supposes that she has selected him as the victim of some sort of racket. Disgusted with modelling, Nicole, abetted by an ex-chorus girl (Helen Broderick) and a parsimonious headwaiter (Mischa Auer), next risks the headwaiter's savings on a frantic effort to find herself a rich fiance. Unfortunately, no sooner does she find what looks like a good prospect than she discovers that the young executive whom she encountered as a model is her suitor's best friend and determined not to allow him to be victimized by a female fortune hunter. From here, The Rage of Paris plunges rapidly through every impossible variant of a not-too-original situation. Best line: comment of the driver of a milk truck when Nicole, wearing an elaborate evening gown, begs a lift: "These hitchhikers get better dressed every day."

Lord Jeff (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). Freddie Bartholomew, who was temporarily out of the courts last week, has his difficulties in real life, but they are not to be compared with the miseries of his childhood in the cinema. He experienced beatings and neglect in David Copperfield, seasickness in Captains Courageous, a black eye in Little Lord Fauntleroy and kidnapping in Kidnapped. To this imposing list, Lord Jeff adds nothing more grueling than a sojourn in a foundling's home, which Cinemactor Bartholomew endures with his accustomed fortitude. The result is scarcely scintillating or surprising, but provides acceptable entertainment for those who have enjoyed its star's efforts to adjust himself to even less agreeable circumstances.

Intended in part as a tribute to London's late great Dr. Thomas John Barnardo, who started his famed trade schools for orphans in 1867, Lord Jeff picks up the history of young Geoffrey Braemer (Bartholomew) at the moment when he is caught acting as a blind for two daring jewel thieves who have made themselves his guardians. Russell-Cotes School, to which Geoffrey is remanded in lieu of the reformatory, is a naval training institution which seems to be a model of its kind, with good-hearted Herbert Mundin to teach the boys sailors' knots and coach the lifeboat crew; Charles Coburn to improve their characters, and young Mickey Rooney to act as head prefect. To Geoffrey, the routine lacks excitement. It is not until he has insulted the headmaster's wife, tried to run away, been put in coventry, acted as coxswain of the crew and finally been offered a job on the Queen Mary that his appreciation of Russell-Cotes's advantages becomes complete. By this time, in addition to the familiar sight of Master Freddie keeping a stiff upper lip without letting it interfere with the clipped precision of his diction, audiences will have been treated to a presumably authentic glimpse of how England cares for its underprivileged youth. Most exciting shot: little Lord Jeff falling from the yardarm of a facsimile mast into a net.

Always Goodbye (Twentieth Century-Fox) provides Barbara Stanwyck, as an up-to-date young woman caught in the web of social difficulties, with a perplexing problem and an extensive wardrobe. The problem is whether to marry the man she loves (Herbert Marshall), or the guardian (Ian Hunter) of her son, produced before she married anyone at all. The wardrobe is the inevitable equipment, in the cinema, of all young women who work in dress shops.

There has never been much doubt about the cinema's attitude toward mother love. Always Goodbye sheds no new light on the subject, but sound motivation, civilized dialogue, several noteworthy minor performances and Producer Darryl Zanuck's customary flair combine to lift the film well above the average of sentimental social drama. Best bit parts: the stereotyped roles of an excitable barber and a mercenary Paris taxi driver, brought to life respectively by Eddy Conrad and George Davis.

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