The New Pictures, Aug. 8, 1949

Rope of Sand (Paramount) is Hollywood’s flowery way of describing the prohibited desert area surrounding a fabulous South African diamond mining concession. Mounting guard on the diamonds are a shrewd, sadistic police chief (Paul Henreid), and his boss (Claude Rains), an elegant, cynical fellow who plays with human lives like a petulant puppet master. With the help of a luscious French trollop (Corinne Calvet), the two men are bent on frustrating the aims of a hulking American hunting guide (Burt Lancaster) who feels that he has earned the right to walk off with some of their precious pebbles.

Their plans, of course, go wrong. As soon as Miss Calvet, in a deep-chested décolletage, spots Lancaster in a sweaty, open-collared shirt, she is seized with a different idea: to walk off with Lancaster, diamonds or no. By the time she has had her way, the plot has encompassed a torture scene and the remarkable regeneration of the heroine. It has also been looped and twisted into a tricky knot of complications and double crosses. Rope, in fact, proves only two things: 1) given enough plot, any Hollywood melodrama can be counted on to hang itself, and 2) when it comes to acting, Miss Calvet, for all her diamantine Gallic glamour, is only a rhinestone in the rough.

‘Not Wanted (Emerald; Film Classics), as its strident advertisements declaim, is the story of an unwed mother. Ordinarily, when a movie tackles such a delicate subject, it strangles on sobs and special pleading or is scissored to death by censorship. As produced by a new independent unit, organized by Cinemactress Ida Lupino and husband Collier Young, it emerges as an earnest and unadorned account of a tragic problem.

The seduction of Bobby-Soxer Sally Kelton (Sally Forrest) is neither brutal nor particularly sordid. It is simply commonplace. By the time Sally knows that she is pregnant, her seducer has disappeared and she is already half in love with an upstanding young gas-station manager (Keefe Brasselle). From there on the plot follows all the steps of Sally’s degradation and eventual rehabilitation with a kind of remorseless documentary fervor.

Much of the picture’s force comes from its flat—and often flatfooted—insistence on telling the story straight. Its dirty children, dilapidated porches and stuffy hall bedrooms are authentically grimy; its dialogue often catches the nagging overtones of everyday frustration and defeat. But its brightest achievement is the fresh, engaging and often stirring performances of its two young principals, both newcomers to the screen. Sally Forrest, though she often recalls Producer Lupine’s own lush style of acting, has range and depth. So has Keefe Brasselle, who looks something like a lankier Montgomery Clift. For a movie produced on a paltry budget ($154,000), Not Wanted is an impressive job.

Mighty Joe Young (Arko; RKO Radio), a fine piece of action-fantasy, provides the most stupendous spectacle of simian shenanigans since King Kong defied attacking airplanes from the mooring mast of the Empire State Building (1933). Its trick photography is admirable, its whopping implausibility almost impeccable. Best of all, it is such a gigantic, reckless spoof, that it is practically irresistible.

Unlike the ferocious Kong, Gorilla Joe Young is as lovable as a Saint Bernard. He worships his jungle mistress (Terry Moore) and obeys her every word. It is only when he becomes the target of a safari, headed by Robert Armstrong, that he begins to throw his weight around. Captured by Armstrong’s cowboys, who look like Lilliputian daredevils mounted on pygmy horses, Joe is bundled off to Hollywood as a nightclub attraction.

His stay in the U.S. is a stormy one, highlighted by: 1) a tug of war with a string of overaged strongmen (including Primo Camera, Phil (“Swedish Angel”) Olafsson, and Man Mountain Dean); 2) an ear-splitting rampage in which Joe reduces the nightclub to kindling; and 3) the lurid rescue of a tot in a nightie from a burning orphanage.

Except for his rages, Joe’s most impressive feature is his unpredictable size. At one point, in a tussle with some furious lions the size of overgrown rats, Joe looks about as big as a house. Later, little bigger than a normal gorilla, he blandly climbs into a standard-size moving van. In reality, Joe is a puppet of fur-covered aluminum, probably not more than twelve to 18 inches tall. His minutest movements were photographed frame by frame, like the drawings in an animated cartoon, and synchronized with scenes with live actors.

The details of Joe’s technical secrets are locked in the heads of Producer Merian C. Cooper and Director Ernest B. Schoedsack, who also created the mighty Kong. Since it cost $1,800,000 to piece the secrets together in a single film, they are likely to stay there for some time to come.

You’re My Everything (20th Century-Fox) is a movie of and for the family. It has just about everything, including Technicolor, that a family movie should have: a devoted father (Dan Dailey) who can sing & dance, a doting mother (Anne Baxter) who can dance and act, and a sprightly moppet of a daughter (Shari Robinson) who, like most Hollywood prodigies, can do almost everything except the two-and-a-half somersault on a flying trapeze.

All three members of this delightful family get into the movies, and each one on his own becomes a star. The rest of the film is composed of snitches and snatches from the family album of box-office hits—includingsome black & white satires of silent films in which Anne Baxter plays a frizzed girl of the ’20s with a highly energetic twittering of legs and lashes.

The formula used in Everything is one way of doubling and tripling the number and variety of songs and dances in a movie without having to worry about whether they fit into the plot. With good enough air-cooling in neighborhood thea ters, it could also triple the summer till.