The New Pictures

Hans Christian Andersen (Samuel Goldwyn; RKO Radio) is an unusual cinebiography in that it candidly disclaims having anything to do with the facts of its subject's life. A foreword to the picture announces: "Once upon a time there lived in Denmark a great storyteller named Hans Christian Andersen. This is not the story of his life, but a fairy tale about this great spinner of fairy tales."

Moss Hart's scenario follows Cobbler Andersen (Danny Kaye) from the village of Odense, where he lures the children from school with his beguiling stories, to Copenhagen, where he falls in love with a beautiful ballerina (Jeanmaire). In time, Andersen comes to realize that the ballerina is really in love with her ballet-master husband (Farley Granger). So he returns to Odense to continue telling his tales to tykes, but not before he has written a story for a ballet, The Little Mermaid, and Jeanmaire has danced it with crashing success.

As big, tinseled and highly colored as Andersen's children's stories were simple, direct and unadorned, the picture is Veteran Producer Goldwyn's 88th film in 38 years of moviemaking. It is also his biggest and most expensive (109 shooting days, $4,000,000 budget) production. The picture has mammoth sets--e.g., a Copenhagen square complete with shops, canal, bridge, market and opera house. It has four lavish ballets, among them the 17-minute-long Little Mermaid number, danced by lively, poodle-topped French Ballerina Jeanmaire, Choreographer Roland Petit of the Ballets de Paris, and a chorus of mermaids among $400,000 worth of underwater caves, fish netting, giant shells, ship spars and Technicolored jetsam. Frank (Guys and Dolls) Loesser has written eight catchy songs, among them three based on Andersen tales, Little Thumbelina, The Emperor's New Clothes and The Ugly Duckling.

For all this movie magnificence, the film's most genuinely affecting moments are in Danny Kaye's performance in the title role. Looking a little like a Danish Walter Mitty, Comedian Kaye foregoes his familiar scat type of clowning to give a gentle, appealing and restrained characterization. Whether he flies a kite, sings to an inchworm, talks to a dog or transforms his thumb into a little girl, Kaye succeeds in conjuring up something of the charm of a child's storybook world: that magical realm of slippered kings, pouting princesses, dragons and serpents, flowers that waltz, and porcelain figures that fall in love.

Bloodhounds of Broadway (20th Century-Fox) is a good-humored cinemusical about a few of Damon Runyon's guys and dolls: Lookout Louie, Curtaintime Charlie, Pittsburgh Philo, Ropes McGonigle and other such gruff but likable Times Square characters.

As a result of having to skip town because of a crime investigation, Bookie "Numbers" Foster (Scott Brady) and his hypochondriac sidekick, "Poorly" Sammis (Wally Vernon) wind up in Georgia backwoods country, where they adopt a hillbilly girl (Mitzi Gaynor). In short order the pretty hillbilly becomes a dancing star at Dave the Dude's nightspot and horse parlor on Broadway. It takes just a little while longer for Numbers, spurred on by Mitzi's affection, to decide to go straight.

Bloodhounds of Broadway has some fast Runyonesque patter and a couple of spry tunes. Mitzi Gaynor brings a pert personality and youthful sparkle to her singing, dancing and acting, while the dog stars, Mister and Blondie, a pair of bloodhounds cast in the title roles of Nip & Tuck, are a howl with their own particular brand of doleful dramatics.

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