The New Pictures

The Tin Star (Perlberg-Seaton; Paramount) is presented as a very special breed of horse opera--something the publicists call a "people western." What the moviemakers are trying to say is that the stagecoach trade should hang onto its ten-gallon hats because the characters portrayed are actually intended to resemble real human beings. They don't. Oats is oats, and the only distinctive thing about this bin of them is that they happen to be of a right good grade.

Henry Fonda is an aging ex-sheriff, disillusioned with the lawman's life. Tony Perkins is a nice young Sunday-go-to-meetin' sort of feller who has just been chosen sheriff, and who discovers to his horror that there is more to the job than wearing a tin star. The story develops as the oldtimer, much against his will, is drawn by sympathy into an attempt to teach the young comer how to be a proper lawman--before he becomes a dead one.

The job is not easy. The kid can twirl his six guns like a vaudeville juggler, but when it comes to shooting, he could hardly hit Texas if he were standing in Fort Worth. Worse yet, he has not learned that the best way to handle a fight is generally to duck it.

The two principals play together beautifully, both in harmony with the unreal conventions of the Hollywood western. For Fonda it is a small thing done with distinction; for Perkins the part will probably represent another big forward bound in his rush up the stairway to stardom.

The Story of Esther Costello (Romulus; Columbia) examines the phony charity racket. Following the lead of Nicholas Monsarrat's novel, on which it is based, the picture not only condemns the conscious criminals but also takes a number of lusty sideswipes at their unconscious accomplices: public sentimentality and crassness, official indifference, and the self-righteous complaisance of religious groups.

The Story begins when Esther Costello, an eight-year-old Irish girl, finds a cache of grenades in a ruined farmhouse and accidentally detonates them, killing her mother. The explosion does the girl no actual physical harm, but the shock leaves her deaf, dumb and blind. Five years later, an American woman (Joan Crawford) with plenty of money and nothing to do--she has recently walked out on her unfaithful husband (Rossano Brazzi) --takes the child (Heather Sears) on maternal impulse, and with the help of some therapists teaches her to hear, speak and see with her hands.

From there on, the film becomes a rather weird combination of the lives of Helen Keller and Trilby. Esther turns out to be a lovely and precocious girl, and when the newspapers get the story of her amazing development, her guardian is knocked off her feet by a mailbag full of invitations to speak before civic and religious organizations. She accepts a few of them, and before long she and Esther are major personalities on the lecture circuit. It is only a step from there to raising funds for other handicapped children, and before long Guardian Crawford finds herself on the verge of becoming a big business.

At this point she gets an unexpected letter from her estranged husband, which opens the way to a reconciliation, which opens the lid of the charity's cashbox to a couple of cute crooks. The husband and his accomplice (Ron Randell), a high-pressure pressagent, convert Esther and her guardian, before the fond and foolish woman can quite realize what is happening, from a couple of earnest do-gooders into a full-scale charity circus. Surveying the vulgar array of bands and choirs, kiddies' clubs and visiting celebrities, a hard-boiled newsman sneers: "It's the biggest thing since Ben Hur." But the city fathers beam, the prelates preen, and the everyday suckers lap it up.

And so it might very well have continued if moving pictures did not have to end. This one winds up with what is probably the most improbable happy ending of the season: a rape that makes everything come out right. Nevertheless, the picture's shocks should have some salutary effects. They may remind the public sharply of the Biblical injunction that good is best done secretly, and rather more pleasantly remind everybody that Joan Crawford, a star whose 30-year career has recently bogged down in bad pictures, can still turn in a creditable performance--and what's more, is still pretty darn good-looking too.

Jailhouse Rock (MGM) presents Elvis Presley to the moviegoing public for the third time--sensitively cast as a slob. The slob is a bathtub baritone who finds himself in jail for manslaughter, and who develops some characteristic convict convictions. "Do unto others as they would do unto you," is his motto. "Only do it first." He starts to do it as soon as he gets back in circulation, and the first sucker he takes is the first friend he finds --pleasingly played by Actress Judy Tyler, 24, who was killed in a car crash shortly after the picture was finished. When she lies down invitingly, the slob's only instinct is to walk all over her, and when she has put him on the rock 'n' rollercoaster to success, he tries to throw her overboard on the first curve. As Elvis at his most elegant explains: "That's the way the mop flops."

In the conventional conclusion, love conquers everything but the insuperable Presley personality. For moviegoers who may not care for that personality, Presley himself offers in the film a word of consolation: "Don't worry," he says. "I'll grow on you." If he does, it will be quite a depressing job to scrape him off.

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