Cinema: Also Showing

Hired Wife (Universal) is the old wheeze about the rich young boss (brusque Brian Aherne) and his dreamy young secretary (Rosalind Russell). This time the boss marries the secretary early to save his cement business, frowns and whines through a kissless marriage, shuffles around town in game pursuit of a gold digger (Virginia Bruce) with a personality as hard as his best cement. Some witty, well-timed dialogue plus the articulate gestures and grimaces of paunchy Funnyman Robert Benchley, who gives his first cinema demonstration of his finesse with the mandolin, keep the film from becoming an also-ran.

Dance, Girl, Dance (RKO Radio) solemnly relates a jumbled account of the trials & tribulations borne by pretty showgirls. A well-turned strip-teaseuse (Lucille Ball) rooms with an earnest, apple-cheeked ballerina (Maureen O’Hara). Lucille wants money, Maureen success. Lucille winds up draped in furs and sparkling gewgaws but with no suggestion of purity. Maureen winds up with a job in the American Ballet after teary, trying weeks capering to the jibes of burlesque fans. Contrary to all Hollywood tradition, neither winds up with a man when the alcoholic playboy they both want (Louis Hay ward) is dragged off into an elevator by his former wife (Virginia Field).

Flowing Gold (Warner Bros.) opens with Johnny Blake (John Garfield) moodily waiting in line for a job with a handful of other oil-field “roughnecks.” Soon a stranger justifiably snorts: “Boy, you sure got a chip on your shoulder,” and Johnny snarls: “Want to try and knock it off?” From then on it is merely a question of waiting to see who hits whom with what.

Johnny turns out to be dodging the law for an old murder charge. His flight dumps him into the outwardly grim but inwardly golden presence of Hap O’Connor (Pat O’Brien), a straw boss in charge of a gang of roughnecks who shuttle from field to field drilling wells. When Johnny saves Hap’s life they become friends, exchange cigarets, seldom smile. Hap’s girl Linda (Frances Farmer) hates Johnny because he calls her “freckle nose,” but that is only a prelude to romance. Hap turns on Johnny for pilfering Linda, but the triangle is straightened out when Hap and Johnny save a burning oil well by slam-bang courage. As in countless previous pictures, Pat O’Brien loses his girl in the end to the ne’er-do-well he has reformed, shrugs his rounding shoulders, once again turns his face to buffeting fate.

Traipsing noisily on the heels of M. G. M.’s more pretentious Boom Town (TIME, Aug. 26), Flowing Geld indicates that Hollywood has found the U. S. oil industry an acceptable new background for rehashing lusty old melodrama.