The New Pictures

The Court Jester (Dena; Paramount) features Danny Kaye, bedecked with ASCAP and belles, in a pleasantly goofy travesty of the olden daze into which Hollywood falls so often and so profitably. Danny is cast as a song-and-dance man at the court of a wicked king (Cecil Parker), but in reality Danny is nobody's fool. He is the secret agent of the Black Fox, a nobleman who hides in the forest like some robbing hood. With him hides the true king, still an infant, for whom the Black Fox plans to seize the power.

There is a villain (Basil Rathbone), a palace witch (Mildred Natwick), a princess royal (Angela Lansbury) and a political poison plot. When the squirrely-burly's done, Jester Kaye has managed to get the false king on his knees, the true one on the throne, the heroine (Glynis Johns) in his arms, the villain on his point, and the audience happily lost in some muddle ages that no history book records.

The life of the show is Danny Kaye, who once had nothing much better to say than geet-gat-gittle. He has become a rare film comedian who will give up a laugh now for a smile later, who cares less for his part than for the whole.

In The Court Jester, Funnyman Kaye takes all the laughs he needs, but he takes them when they do not stop the show. To this rule he makes one wonderful exception: the scene in which he jousts with a person known as "the grim and grisly Griswold of the North." The episode begins as Danny totters up to the stirrup cup. There is a beaker of wine for each of the contestants, and he cannot remember which one has been doctored. Does the vessel with the pestle have the pellet with the poison? No, no. The chalice with the palace has the--or was it the brew that is true? But then that means the pellet with the pestle's in the vessel with the brew, with the poison with the palace in the chalice that is--"There's been a change," the witch whispers. "The flagon with the dragon . . ."

Hell on Frisco Bay (Jaguar; Warner) The resident devil is Edward G. Robinson, a sort of menace emeritus who is invited by Alan Ladd, a cop he once framed, to retire from the daily grind to a peaceful chair at San Quentin. Eddie replies at some length: "Oh y-a-a-a-a?" Alan lets his right hand do the talking-and for a man who seems to have scarcely enough muscle to move his own face, he packs quite a punch. The effect of it, in fact, is almost enough to make a moviegoer believe that this picture has a script. Anyway, it has Fay Wray, whom many customers will remember as the girl carried off by King Kong in the early '30s.

Too Bad She's Bad (Getz-Kingsley). Sophia Loren, the bosomy beauty starred in this Italian picture, is now running chest and chest at the European box office with Gina Lollobrigida. In Too Bad She's Bad, Actress Loren gives visible evidence that her reputation is not inflated. She also displays a pleasant little talent for comedy-in case anybody cares.

The story, written by Novelist Alberto Moravia, is a cheerful bit of babble, a tolerant spoof of the great game of guardie e ladri (cops and robbers), which many Italians play with a good-natured gusto all their lives. Sophia, the daughter of a prominent pickpocket (Vittorio De Sica), conies hippety-hipping up to a taxi one day with a couple of boy friends. They ask the driver (Roberto Mastroianni) to head for the beach. On the way, Sophia keeps breathing down the cabby's neck and crooning Bongo Bongo Bongo in his ear. At the beach he waits while she takes a swim.

She undresses behind a bush. He watches. So does the camera. Either the bush has too little or Sophia has too much upholstery. Moments later she and the driver are frolicking in the sand together, and as his blood mounts--beep! The emergency horn informs him that her two confederates are stealing his cab.

And that, for about 95 minutes, is the way the cat jumps, until, of course, she catches the right mouse. In any case, as mousetraps go, there is little doubt that the Italians have built a better one.

Sophia Loren, 21, stands at a statuesque 5 ft. 8 in., and the opulent 140 lbs. between her strawberry blonde hair and her toes is distributed in a symmetrical 38-24-38. When she flounces into Rome's most elegant restaurants, a dramatic hush falls on the room while members of the international set stare at her like hayseeds. Last year, during a personal appearance in Bologna, a mob of males became so impassioned that they tore off her shoes as souvenirs.

Born in Rome, she was raised in Naples, quit school in the seventh grade and has not been known to read a book since. As a child, Sophia was called stecchetta (little stick) because she was so frail. But at 14 she blossomed into something approaching her present contours, entered a beauty contest, won third prize and was off to Rome. Two years later Italian Producer Carlo Ponti met her and launched her in the movies. In the next four years, she ground out 20 films, nine in 1953 alone. Mostly, they were a tribute to matter over mind. But Sophia developed. Among other things, she learned to speak Italian without a Neapolitan accent.

Having risen to fame and fortune (almost $500,000), Sophia has never overcome her childlike delight at posing for photographers. She once held her skirt up so high for a picture on the cover of the weekly Cronache that the Italian police confiscated the entire edition.

As Sophia began crowding Gina Lollobrigida, the two stars flared into a beautifully illuminated public battle which soon degenerated into pressagent-inspired quotes on each other's bust measurements. Now that she has reached the top in Italy, Sophia is ready to start at the top in U.S. films. Next spring she will begin shooting her first American movie, co-starring with Gary Grant and Frank Sinatra in Stanley Kramer's The Pride and the Passion.

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