The New Pictures

Four Jills in a Jeep (20th Century-Fox) and Ladies Courageous (Universal) are Hollywood's idea of what women can do for the war and painful examples of what Hollywood, under the pressure of patriotism, can do to women. In the first, Hollywood vigorously shakes its own hand for letting some actresses go to shake a leg on the world battlefronts. In the second, Loretta Young, Geraldine Fitzgerald and Diana Barrymore pilot planes around the U.S.

The Jeep bounces Carole Landis, Kay Francis, Martha Raye and Mitzi Mayfair through a catch-as-catch-can cineversion of Miss Landis' book (and Satevepost articles) of the same title, reporting their experiences as USO entertainers. In the book, only Miss Landis got married. In the picture, Martha Raye, the feminists' Joe E. Brown, practically ingests the comic sergeant (Phil Silvers) who chauffeurs their jeep. Mitzi Mayfair snuggles up to a uniformed ex-vaudeville partner (Dick Haymes, who is Fox's threat to Frank Sinatra, and sings like melting vanilla ice cream). Kay Francis plays handles with an English Army doctor who utters the stunning gallantry : "If I'd held this hand ten years ago I might have a full house now." Miss Francis just laughs. In Britain and Africa, the cinemactresses clearly enjoyed themselves, worked hard, and brought some pleasure to places where it was needed. But not much of the reworking of their travelogue is fun to see or hear.

Ladies Courageous comes in on a shattered wing and an unanswered prayer, noses over, and spills out a motley set of WAFS (see cut, p. 94) who later become WASPS. This whole covey of highly burnished cinemactresses looks more like Wam-pas cuties than like aeronauts. Judging by their actions, they cannot be trusted to pilot a perambulator, much less a B17.

Miss Barrymore philanders with another WAF's husband; his wife remorsefully crashes her plane. Miss Fitzgerald, a neurotic, embarrasses her sister, Director Young, by making a hot landing (for publicity purposes). But she compensates for that by all but killing herself and another WAF in two other planes. Loretta Young comforts her warmly: "You tried!"

One wag emerged from the preview with a theme song for the girls:

The men will forgive us

(The ones that outlive us)

No matter how often we fail.

Who cares what trees-in

The plane falls that she's-in.

She's got a sting in her tail.

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