The New Pictures

Let's Make Love (20th Century-Fox] brings Marilyn Monroe on-screen with an entrance that should make historians of the drama forget Bernhardt's exits. The viewer sees the stage of a Greenwich Village theater, and in its center, a shiny fire pole. Clinging to it as if to her last shred of resistance before an engulfing passion is Marilyn, rigged out in black tights. Languorously she slides down the pole, uncoils, arranges her lips in Schlitz position and murmurs, "My name is. Lolita. And I'm not supposed to. Play. With boys." Then she begins to sing My Heart Belongs to Daddy.

There is a lot of Marilyn to admire these days, but it is still in fine fettle; at 34, she makes 21 look ridiculous. The smile that reassures nervous males ("It's all right, I'm not real") has never been more dazzling. And the comic counterpoint of fleshy grandeur and early Shirley Temple manner is better than ever. But despite Mrs. Miller, the film is not really good low humor. It is merely good-humored. Co-Star Yves Montand, the French music hall singer, is urbane and masculine, but he seems constrained by a part that requires him to pretend he is not an expert song-and-dance man. He plays a billionaire who, to be near Actress Monroe, decides to take the part of himself in a satirical off-Broadway revue and keeps his identity secret so that Marilyn may love him for his pilgrim soul, rather than his money.

The production is slick, the songs are good--notably one in which Crooner Frankie Vaughan says with fervor, in effect, never mind good lyrics, "give me a song that sells"--and the plot no thinner than most. The supporting actors are expert, especially Tony Randall, who plays Montand's pressagent with an accurate blend of servility and fresh-faced eagerness. One reason why the film, although consistently pleasant, is only fitfully funny may be a plague now widespread in Hollywood movies. Milton Berle, Gene Kelly and Bing Crosby appear in brief "cameo" parts as themselves (they are supposed to be teaching Montand how to joke, dance and sing), and whatever disbelief has been suspended comes crashing to earth. Miltie, Gene and Bing are good fellows, but farceurs should know enough to come in out of the reality.

The Captain's Table (Rank; 20th Century-Fox) is a so-so stateroom farce in which an honest clod of a freighter captain (John Gregson) is put in command of a passenger liner, only to find that it is a vessel of iniquity, whose officers are mainly concerned with smuggling cigarettes and snuggling with lady voyagers. Before long the captain has taken a pratfall into a tray of lobster newburg, walked shudderingly across a boat deck alive with cries of water-borne passion, indulged in a spirited pie-throwing match with a roomful of children, and repulsed the sort of lowlife lady (Nadia Gray) that fictional characters are always repulsing. In no time at all, however, he meets the sort of highlife chick (Peggy Cummins) that fictional characters are always marrying; and at film's end, sure enough, he makes port.

Best bit: coming on board for his first inspection tour, Captain Gregson spies the nubile young nanny of the ship's nursery in the grasp of a seaman. "What's your job?" the captain roars. "Babies, sir," says the pretty thing. "Carry on," says the captain.

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