Cinema: The New Pictures, Jul. 28, 1952

The Story of Will Rogers (Warner) is an unusual Hollywood film biography It is both faithful to the facts of Cowboy-Humorist Rogers’ life, and has in Will Rogers Jr., playing the title role, almost a carbon copy of his famous father.

Based on Uncle Clem’s Boy, by the late Mrs. Will Rogers (played by Jane Wyman), the picture traces Rogers’ career from Oklahoma cowpuncher to Wild-West-show trick roper, vaudeville lasso artist-monologist, and poet lariat and sagebrush sage of stage, screen, radio, banquet table, speakers’ platform and syndicated column. The picture ends with Rogers’ death at 55, during an Alaskan flight with Wiley Post.

Though slickly put together, The Story of Will Rogers often slacks off for lack of a dramatic story to tell. Funnyman Rogers career had no violent ups & downs. He had no enemies (“I joke about every prominent man of my time,” he once said, “but I never met a man I didn’t like”). And time has taken the edge off many of his most typically topical quips.

The picture manages to capture some of Rogers’ genial joshing and his common and uncommon sense on national and international affairs. (Samples: “Our foreign deals are like an open book, especially a checkbook”; “The U.S. never lost a war or won a peace.”) To bolster its just-folks plot, the movie throws in a couple of production numbers from the Ziegfeld Follies, in which Rogers starred. But it is in Will Rogers Jr.’s performance that his father comes most alive on the screen: the familiar slouch with hands jammed in pockets, the unruly forelock, the sheepish grin, the shambling wisecracks delivered in his famous gumchewing drawl.

The Franchise Affair (Associated British Picture Corp.; Stratford Pictures)gets its title from one of those picturesque British country houses, The Franchise, inhabited by tart old Mrs. Sharpe (Marjorie Fielding) and her attractive daughter (Dulcie Gray). The affair at The Franchise is fomented by a teen-age girl (Ann Stephens), who falsely, but with plausible evidence, accuses the well-mannered Sharpes of kidnaping her, beating her, and holding her prisoner in their attic as a rather unusual method of solving their servant problem.* In the face of mounting community hostility, the perplexing case is finally cracked by a young lawyer (Michael Denison), who has taken an interest in the proceedings—as well as in Miss Sharpe.

The picture, co-authored and directed by Lawrence Huntington, is a leisurely, literate and pungent whodunit from England, graced with good performances and laced with gentle wit. All in all, The Franchise Affair is a polite little storm in a teacup. It is also an exceedingly well-brewed cinematic cup of tea.

We’re Not Married (20th Century-Fox) is a sort of comic sequel to A Letter to Three Wives, which showed how a rumor of infidelity affected a trio of young suburban matrons. The current picture shows the way five husbands and their wives react to the news that they are not legally married. An absent-minded justice of the peace (Victor Moore) had married them before his commission went legally into effect.

The recipients of this startling news are the Glad Gladwyns (Fred Allen and Ginger Rogers), a Mr. & Mrs. breakfast team, who address each other by such endearing terms as “panther girl” and “white fang” when they are not being lovey-dovey on the air, dispensing commercials and “good, clean, nauseating fun”; a flouncy blonde (Zsa Zsa Gabor) who is trying to dig all the gold she can from her Texas-tycoon husband (Louis Calhern); a laconic Long Island couple (Paul Douglas and Eve Arden) who communicate with each other only in monosyllables; Mrs. Mississippi (Marilyn Monroe), a bathing-beauty contest winner, and her baby-tending husband (David Wayne); a G.I. (Eddie Bracken) from Richmond, Va. who frantically tries to remarry his expectant wife (Mitzi Gaynor) just as he is about to be shipped overseas.

We’re Not Married has a laugh-provoking premise but, as scripted by Producer Nunnally Johnson, the premise does not always live up to its promise. Far & away the best sequence: baggy-eyed Fred Allen being wed to a bored Ginger Rogers by fuddy-duddy Justice of the Peace Victor Moore in one of the funniest marriage ceremonies ever seen on the screen.

Island of Desire (David Rose; United Artists) defies all the laws of probability by casting shapely Linda Darnell as a waspish spinster. Stunningly photographed in Technicolor, Actress Darnell portrays Lieut. Elizabeth Smythe, a Navy nurse who is washed up on an uninhabited Pacific island after a troopship is sunk during World War II. Washed up with her is a blond, boyish Marine corporal (Tab Hunter).

Oddly enough, the two castaways do not hit it off at first. Lieut. Smythe pulls rank on the corporal and calls him an “unpleasant brat”; he responds by calling her a “sourpuss.” But in due course things get back to normal, and they are seen bounding along the beach clad in breezy tropical raiment and quaffing coconut milk. Unfortunately, their tropical paradise is short-lived, for a handsome R.A.F. pilot (Donald Gray) crash-lands on the island.

To reinforce this slender plot, Island of Desire offers some pretty scenery in addition to its decorative leading lady. Also prominent in the small cast: Barbecue, the personable piglet discovered on the island by Lieut. Smythe.

Has Anybody Seen My Gal (Universal-International) is a movie with a moral: money is not necessarily conducive to happiness. This discovery is made by a dyspeptic and crotchety old multimillionaire (Charles Coburn) who forsakes his bank deposits to move in with a quaintly colorful small-town family, where he not only finds peace of mind but also wins first prize in a local art exhibit with one of his paintings.

Has Anybody Seen My Gal is set in what is referred to as the Roaring Twenties, an era when, to judge from this picture, flappers in short skirts and college men in raccoon coats did little else but pour down bathtub gin, read Elinor Glyn’s It, dance the Charleston, and indulge in such bon mots as “hot diggity,” “the cat’s meow” and “skiddoo.” The result is a thoroughly lightweight but agreeably lighthearted little taffy pull in Technicolor. Surrounding Multimillionaire Coburn are a number of pleasant young people, including Piper Laurie, Rock Hudson, Gigi Perreau and an enthusiastic assort ment of sheiks and shebas.

*A latter-day switch, as adapted from Josephine Tey’s 1949 novel on the famous 18th century case of a domestic servant named Elizabeth Canning of Aldermanbury, England, who falsely accused an old woman of keeping her prisoner in a loft and soliciting her to lead an immoral life.