The New Pictures

Mrs. Parkington (M.G.M.) is the fourth lesson in the Garson-Pidgeon series on true love and enduring marriage (Blossoms in the Dust, Mrs. Miniver, Madame Curie). It discharges an obligation to the Louis Bromfield original by drawing a fine distinction between the robber barons of the '90s, who robbed each other, and the Wall Street wolves of the '30s, who robbed widows and orphans. Another distinction that may strike audiences as more valid is that the barons (most of them) ended up in mansions on Fifth Avenue and the wolves (some of them) in Sing Sing cells.

The biggest, most expensive, most marmoreal mansion of all was that of hot-tempered Major Augustus Parkington (Walter Pidgeon). The Major built it as an anniversary present for his wife Susie (Greer Garson), the pretty little boardinghouse keeper from Leaping Rock, Nevada, and to open it planned the most elaborate ball of the season. But the Major was a crude fellow in the eyes of his neighbors and, when the night of the ball arrived, the Four Hundred cut him dead. Furious at the insult to his wife, the Major proceeded to ruin the remiss millionaires, one by one. When Susie discovered that one of them had resorted to suicide, she not only determined to halt her husband's vengeful program but succeeded, thanks to some pretty shrewd manipulation of the stockmarket.

With a bouncing performance by Walter Pidgeon, the lifelong romance of wise Susie and her empire-building Major is a disarming and refreshing story--far more successful than the double exposure which runs alongside it. This somewhat confusing countermelody concerns Grandmother Susie, the lone ruler of her late husband's empire; Grandson Amory, a Wall Streeter who has embezzled $31 million; and the crummiest set of moneygrubbing relatives since The Little Foxes. In a practical demonstration of her old Major's rugged sense of justice, Susie pays back the $31 million, leaving herself broke and sending the heirs apparent scuttling uselessly for their lawyers.

Somehow, the tricky juggling of these two simultaneous stories manages to avoid the awful fate it deserves. The somehow is an out & out triumph of Greer Carson's versatility as an actress. Reverting in dizzy succession from grandmother to bride to grandmother, she keeps the character of Mrs. Parkington sufficiently herself to lend unity and even dignity to a picture that might well have become a hodgepodge of cosmetic virtuosity.

Laura (20th Century-Fox), thanks to some slick direction by Otto Preminger and a cast out of the top drawer, is a highly polished and debonair whodunit with only one inelegant smudge on its gleaming surface. In swank settings that cry for a pinch of poison or at least a dainty derringer, the victim is obliged for purposes of plot to have her pretty face blown off by a double-barreled shotgun fired at close range.

The plot also is double-barreled, making a mystery not only of the killer but of the killed. Told in a series of flash backs narrated by snub-nosed Clifton Webb, in his first picture since 1924, it gives ample scope for a display of his suavely comical talent and puts only a slight strain on Gene Tierney's acting.

Laura (Gene Tierney) is an ambitious beginner in the advertising business when she dares to beard the exquisite columnist-commentator Waldo Lydecker (Webb) in his noontime lair at the Algonquin. Though her nerve earns her some carbolic insults from the great man, it makes her in almost no time his protegee. As such, she soon becomes a high-powered executive and gives a job to polo-playing Shelby Carpenter (Vincent Price), under the very nose of his only visible means of support, Park Avenue's well-heeled Ann Treadwell (Judith Anderson). Both Ann and Waldo are patently annoyed; and when Shelby, who has become engaged to Laura, starts dating one of her models, everyone is mad enough to kill. Someone does.

Whodunit becomes the problem of Mark McPherson (Dana Andrews), a police lieutenant with Racquet Club manners, who for the first time in Hollywood history arrives on the scene minus a stooging sergeant. Bristling with brains and breeding, Mark proceeds to track the murderer and fall for Laura. He catches both just in time to prevent another lovely face from being reduced to hamburger.

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