Triumph Without Loretta

Many an American felt his first real thrill over Alexander Graham Bell's invention of the telephone when he saw Hollywood's debonair Don Ameche perform the miracle on celluloid while making love to Loretta Young. Last week, Moscow moviegoers were equally thrilled to relive a great moment of Soviet science. In a new full-length picture (Alexander Popov), People's Artist of the U.S.S.R. Nicolai Cherkassov (who looks a little like Henry Fonda) enacts the life of Russia's scientist. Popov, in the U.S.S.R.'s campaign to claim all the inventions of the past half-century, is the man who invented the radio. In the picture, Popov triumphs, despite the conniving of an "Italo-British adventurer" named Marconi "who, while still inexperienced in scientific matters, was nevertheless an aggressive grabber of other people's ideas and inventions."

In spite of the barefaced claim for the glory of Russia, Moscow's critics tended to carp at the picture. "The episodes projected by the scenario," wrote one, "should have demonstrated that Popov's invention was not an accident but the fruit of deep scientific foresight and firm belief in the Tightness of the chosen path. Instead, the film shows Popov's work in such a way that the spectator is forced to believe in a happy concourse of luck."

The spectators were, at least, not forced to believe in a happy concourse of romance. The picture featured nobody even remotely resembling Miss Young.

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