The New Pictures

Act of Love (United Artists) for no particular reason transposes the 1949 Alfred Hayes novel, The Girl on the Via Flaminia, from Rome to Paris. The novel, an equally pointless attempt to transpose A Farewell to Arms into a contemporary setting, proved that you can't get high twice on the same old vermouth. Act of Love shows that the third time around can be a distinctly sobering experience. The hero of the picture is a G.I. intended by the script to be just like every other G.I., and played by Kirk Douglas with aggressive averageness. The heroine is the girl of a censor's dreams--a nice-girl prostitute. Trying to be both at once, Actress Dany Robin seems most of the time like nobody at all, but she is one of the most appetizing new French dishes set before U.S. moviegoers in recent years.

Kirk and Dany meet in Paris toward the end of World War II. Kirk asks her to go to bed with him. She says no. Thereupon Kirk does what the script seems to think any red-blooded American boy would do: he asks her to marry him. After that, they do a lot of touring around Paris while the camera takes travel-poster shots. In the end, Kirk's C.O. refuses to approve his marriage to the girl, and though Kirk fakes a marriage permit, he is picked up by MPs on the way to his wedding. Moviegoers, who have waited 108 minutes for something to happen, may be ready to follow poor Dany when she jumps in the Seine.

Intellectually, Director Anatole Litvak (Snake Pit; Sorry, Wrong Number) has behaved something like a schoolboy on his first visit to Paris. With visions of Camille and Rene Clair movies and Tropic of Cancer commingling gloriously in his head, he has rushed off down all the side streets in search of life, and has emerged, after interminable researches, triumphant--with an expurgated postcard.

The Eddie Cantor Story (Warner). One day in 1951, oldtime Comedian Eddie Cantor asked Hollywood Columnist Sidney Skolsky, whose 1946 production of The Jolson Story grossed $12 million and put oldtime Mammy Singer Jolson back on top of the entertainment world, if he could not do the same for Cantor.

Skolsky said he would try. He has tried hard, but in the title role, a gifted boy has been asked to do a man's work. Keefe Brasselle, 30, a Hollywood newcomer, has a slight resemblance to the young Cantor. After two months of concentrated coaching in Cantor's mannerisms, he was as ready for the part as he was likely to get.

Although he handily mastered the mannerisms of the famous comedian--the giddy, stiff-legged Cantor canter, the twittering hands, the O-mouth and popeyed stare--Brasselle could not find in himself the essential thing that makes Eddie run: the dynamo that sends through his audiences a crackle of sympathetic electricity. As a result, the spectator is always conscious that Brasselle is trying to be like Cantor, and cannot decide which performer to be embarrassed for. Besides which, 116 minutes is too long for any take-off to take.

In other respects, the picture is pleasant enough. Cantor's voice, cued into the song sequences, still keeps much of its first freshness. Also, the script manages to get a few words in between the big production numbers, and even provides a couple of probable parts for Marilyn Erskine, as Ida Cantor, and for Aline MacMahon, who carries the first half of the picture as Eddie's grandmother.

Movie Columnist-Producer Sidney Skolsky has given many a big Hollywood star a thrilling twinge of envy: he once bit Louella Parsons on the arm.

Sidney was an established movie columnist in 1936 when he went to work for Hearst's King Features Syndicate. "In the very first column," he recalls, "I had an item that Garbo would not marry Leopold Stokowski. Little did I know that on the front page of the paper was a Louella Parsons story that Garbo was marrying Stokowski. Parsons got sore as hell, and she started putting in words with Hearst." By and by, Sidney was out of a job.

A few months later, he ran into Louella in a restaurant. After a short chat, says Skolsky, "Parsons said to me: 'You're a nice feller. I didn't know you were such a nice boy.' I'd been boiling for some time about her, and I couldn't punch her. The only thing I could do--I was angry--I leaned over and bit her hard . . . We're friends today."

Sidney, now 48, writes a cheerfully cynical column ("Don't get me wrong--I love Hollywood") which is syndicated in some 20 papers. Dark, small (5 ft. 3 in.) and intense, he is something of a character, even in a town where characters are common. For one thing, he is mortally afraid of driving a car. He has solved this problem by getting the stars to chauffeur him from studio to studio (where, unlike most of his colleagues, he is permitted to roam freely). Among his more constant chauffeurs is Marilyn Monroe, whom he knew before her calendar days. "I pinch-hit for Joe DiMaggio," he says. "Anytime he's out of town, Marilyn calls me and I go out with her . . . I'm the kind of guy [stars] feel comfortable with . . ."

Skolsky's first try at producing a picture (The Jolson Story) was a smash financial success. Unfortunately, he made "very little" for himself, since there was never any signed contract on the deal. With The Eddie Cantor Story, Skolsky has made sure of his cut: the deal is on paper. He hopes this film will make money. Anyway, he says, "we did an honest job. There are some truths in this picture. We wanted to show what made Eddie run."

Sidney has no plans for chucking his column for the sound stages and a producer's plush office. "Dont get me wrong," he says, "I love them both."

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