The New Pictures

For Me and My Gal (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). Jo Hayden (Judy Garland), Jimmy Metcalfe (George Murphy) and Harry Palmer (Gene Kelly) have one thing in common: they are smalltime song-&-dancers whose hearts are set on one day appearing at that Pantheon of U.S. vaudeville, The Palace. Jimmy is a sort of Irish George Raft, who loves Jo. Jo is a surprisingly sweet young girl, who unfortunately loves Harry. Harry is a dangerous but successful novelty in musicomedy: a character who begins as a squirrel-collared masher and winds up, without too much grinding of gears, as a hero. In the course of this cinemetamorphosis:

> Cinemactor Murphy remains merely kind and patient.

> Under the prospering influence of World War I Miss Garland flowers into a kind of Elsie Janis.

> Cinemactor Kelly, expecting a date at The Palace, cripples his hand to dodge the draft, then becomes an overseas Y.M.C.A. entertainer in remorse, at last achieves military valor, the renewed love of Miss Garland and the long-deferred moment on the stage of The Palace.

Along the road, the principals sing and dance Oh, You Beautiful Doll, For Me And My Gal, Till We Meet Again, Ballin' the Jack, How Ya Gonna Keep 'Em Down on the Farm. The contagious little tune Ballin' the Jack, as delivered by Miss Garland and Mr. Kelly (helped by Miss Garland's racehorse legs and by a superbly realistic vaudeville audience), is worth the price of admission.

In this nostalgic re-evocation of vaudeville's golden age and the sweeter, simpler times of World War I, Miss Garland and Mr. Kelly do a notable job. Kelly, who made a Broadway hit winter before last in Pal Joey, has flashes of acting intuition which should rate him a special berth, or perhaps a drawing room, in Hollywood. Bony-faced Judy Garland is already well-graduated from a sort of female Mickey Rooney into one of the more reliable song pluggers in the business. She also begins to show symptoms of dramatic sensitiveness, discipline and talent.

You Were Never Lovelier (Columbia) does not quite live up to its title but presents fresh evidence that Fred Astaire is still a superb dancer and a deft light-comedian and that Rita Hayworth is. still the most ambrosial lady he has ever teamed with. But Astaire underplays his lively feet and Miss Hayworth overplays her lovely hand. Even so, Astaire's dancing has the staccato precision of a military command, and Rita Hayworth, merely walking down a staircase, is something to risk court-martial for.

Like the comedy, the plot is a little overdone. Miss Hayworth is hustled into marriage because her Argentine father (Adolphe Menjou) insists that she wed before her younger sisters. Fred Astaire, a momentarily unemployed Yankee hoofer, gets mixed up in it and, against Father's wishes, walks off with both a job and Rita. These complications are set to smooth music by Jerome Kern, which is served up, with whipped cream, by Xavier Cugat. Hoofer Astaire sings two tunes aptly enough to raise one of Bing Crosby's sleepy eyebrows, conducts Miss Hayworth through a lush nocturnal duet.

This time Fred Astaire's dancing is not as expertly invented or as lyrically staged as his best, but it is still the best dancing in movies. Long-boned Rita Hayworth is as richly lovely as a good reproduction of a Renaissance painting, and that is enough. The supporting cast should take one hard-working bow apiece, with special applause for Adolphe Menjou. There is nothing wrong with You Were Never Lovelier except that it consists of a little too much of not quite enough of a lot of very good things.

Wings and the Woman (RKO-Radio) is a rather likable fable about the late Amy Johnson, who, with Jim Mollison, broke most of the flying records of her day. The film is a thorough view of the records they broke and little about the kind of life they led on the ground. The same temperamental drives which made them flyers made their marriage a sort of Pickford-Fairbanks affair of aviation, ended inevitably in a divorce.

Anna Neagle, whom cinemaddicts have known chiefly as a dancer, is no Amy Johnson Mollison. But her tense, lucid performance makes a good story by portraying a human being with great purity of vocation. Cinemactor Robert Newton was called from service on a mine-sweep to play Jim Mollison in place of Cinemactor David Niven (now in the Commandos).

Mr. Newton does himself proud. He has enough masculine resonance to invigorate a legion of more comely Great Lovers, and a sort of Mediterranean laziness which lays a rich bass under Miss Neagle's lyric performance.

Director Herbert Wilcox does much better by The Woman than he does by The Wings; almost none of the plane shots looks any more alarming than it is to sit in a studio cockpit with steam blowing past you. When Amy Johnson Mollison's motors stopped last year and she bailed out, she came down to die silently in the cold waters of the Thames estuary.* When Anna Neagle does the same thing, menace music picks up the silence. It is not menacing; it is infernally annoying.

* Incidentally causing the death of a dashing young commander of the British Navy. He dived off the vessel with which he was escorting a convoy and reached her, but they were not picked up in time. He died later from exposure.

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