Dear TIME-Reader:

Who writes the movie reviews? Over the years, TIME's Cinema section has established a tradition of sharp and witty criticism, and more readers are asking us this question. For the past two years, our principal movie reviewer has been Associate Editor Henry Bradford Darrach Jr.

Among the many fine stylists and phrasemakers on the magazine, Brad Darrach at 34 has developed into one of the best. But when he came to TIME ten years ago, with only brief journalistic experience (on the Providence Journal and Baltimore Sun), he recalls that he couldn't put together enough good material in a week to fill the Miscellany column. And after he wrote his first film review, Darrach's senior editor returned it to him with the notation: "Sure, sure, but what was the movie about?"

Since then, Darrach has written some notable Cinema covers, among them, 3-D (TIME, June 8, 1953), Lollobrigida (TIME, Aug. 16, 1954), Marlon Brando (TIME, Oct. 11, 1954), Walt Disney (TIME, Dec. 27) and Frank Sinatra (TIME, Aug. 29).

Readers also like to quote Darrach quips back to us. A few recent favorites:

"Esther Williams' pictures are generally just so much water over the dame";

"Life among the cocktail houris and their five o'clock shadows";

"In Europe Gina Lollobrigida is the most famous seven syllables since 'Come up and see me some time.' "

Darrach's gift for words may be traced to a lineage of hereditary Scottish bards and minor English writers. Stern custodian of this heritage has been his maternal grandmother Alice Dunbar, now over 80. For grandmother Dunbar, he wrote romantic prose until he was eight, when he went off to Philadelphia's old St. Peter's (Episcopal) Choir School to sing as a boy soprano and play football in the school's historic cemetery. "I remember," he says, "catching a forward pass on Stephen Decatur's grave." At West Philadelphia High, Darrach began to compose poetry. He kept on writing it as a University of Pennsylvania student, insurance investigator, newsman and TIME editor.

As TIME reviewer, Darrach, who considers movies "not only one of the liveliest arts but one of the most important," studies the world production of pictures each week and sees at least five before he writes his reviews. Moviemakers are aware of the value of this selectivity. Said Columbia Pictures' Executive Producer Jerry Wald: "The public is more educated today and shops around for pictures. And TIME influences a great deal of that public."

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