Cinema: The New Pictures: Jan. 4, 1932

Manhattan Parade (Warner). For the last two years, various plays in Manhattan (Once in a Lifetime, Wonder Boy, Louder Please) have poked fun at cinemanufacture with varying success. Manhattan Parade tries to poke similar fun at Broadway. It is about two producers who scream at each other continually. They allow themselves to be duped by a Russian stage director who, when planning a spectacular production, insists on having the roof and one wall of the theatre removed. He tears out all the orchestra seats, wants to have musicians occupy the balcony and hum instead of playing on their instruments. As might be expected, the Russian’s production is no success. The producers, named Lou and Jake (after Manhattan’s Lee & Jake Shubert) go back to the cheese business, try to get their Russian a consignment of Swiss cheese with one large hole instead of many small ones. Good shot: Lou & Jake promising to reward a loyal scrubwoman by making her a play reader.

Husband’s Holiday (Paramount) is a solemn little problem play on marital infidelity, a subject which usually in the cinema is material for fun. The three persons chiefly involved—husband (Clive Brook), wife (Vivienne Osborne) and mistress (Juliette Compton)—regard their situation as a predicament. They make honest and generally sensible efforts to extricate themselves. The wife is eventually generous enough to give the husband a divorce. He, still troubled by a case of indecision, wanders about in the snow at night, making up his mind which way to go. The mistress, who is not a designing wench but a loyal devotee, observes his quandary, thinks to solve it. by taking poison. Poison fails to kill her. The last reel shows Clive Brook at home again, solemnly celebrating Christmas with his wife and children. Adapted from Ernest Pascal’s novel and play The Marriage Bed, the picture adds up as a sincere and thoughtful if somewhat superficial sermon on the sanctity of marriage and the insignificance of escapade. Typical shot: Juliette Compton saying “Don’t let me die!” to Clive Brook just after taking the poison. Delicious (Fox). Pictures in which Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell appear together seldom change plot. Janet Gaynor is a waif of some sort and Charles Farrell is a personable, wealthy young man. Beyond waiting for Miss Gaynor to break into song or into the peculiar prancing gait which she affects in moments of exuberance, there is never any suspense. You are aware that before the picture is over. Miss Gaynor and her accomplice will be on the brink of matrimony. They have become engaged to each other in half the civilized countries of the world, always with a vague air of being decidedly astonished at this romantic turn of events. Delicious is a fair example of their work. As soon as Miss Gaynor is seen, as a Scottish immigrant girl named Heather flitting about the steerage of a liner bound for the U. S., you know that Farrell, a polo-player returning to Long Island, will presently make his appearance from the first-class decks. You surmise that minor difficulties—an immigration official who wants to keep Miss Gaynor outside the U. S., and a blonde who wants to keep Mr. Farrell—will separate them temporarily. Though you might not guess that she would do it in the crate of one of Mr. Farrell’s polo ponies, you know that Heather will presently get into the U. S., eventually nod her head when Mr. Farrell asks her a certain question. A mediocre score by George Gershwin and the Swedish comicalities of El Brendel are adjuncts of Delicious. Like other Gaynor-Farrell romances, the picture also has an element which is almost impossible to explain—an element of spontaneity and charm. Typical shot: Heather having fun with a musical bottle which tinkles when she lifts it. Janet Gaynor’s first noticeable role in the cinema was that of a girl who got wet in The Johnstown Flood. Before that she had been a clerk in a San Francisco lawyer’s office, a public school student in the dozen or more cities where her stepfather Harry C. Jones (“Jonesy” to her) plied his trade of electrician. Now in Europe, Cinemactress Gaynor generally prefers Honolulu for her holidays. A Honolulu holiday a year ago, taken without the permission of her employers, cost her $44,000, nearly started a scandal when Charles Farrell accidentally booked passage on the same boat. Lately she has become more firmly identified than ever with roles like the ones which Mary Pickford used to play, the ingenuous heroine of sentimental comedy-drama. Privately, Miss Gaynor likes to read In Tune with the Infinite by Ralph Waldo Trine, has a freckled nose. Hell Divers (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) is a successful merger of two well known types of cinema entertainment: aeronautical spectacle (like Hell’s Angels, Dirigible) and man-to-man comedy (like What Price Glory, The Big Parade). It is also a loud advertisement for the U. S. Navy. One of the shortcomings of Hell Divers is the fact that spectacle and plot are not well integrated. Parts which are pure spectacle are noisy, informative and magnificently photographed. Best shots: a covey of bombing planes wheeling one by one to dive at a target (shown three times); a plane landing on the deck of the U. S. S. Saratoga as seen by a camera attached to the underpart of the plane; target practice in which airplane gunners fire at three blimps with cameras mounted on their guns. The plot which ties these and similar ups-&-downs together is familiar but ingratiating. It has to do with two airplane gunners—Clark Gable and Wallace Beery—who snarl at each other through most of the picture. Beery plays a dirty trick on Gable which causes trouble between Gable and his girl. Beery’s girl tries to patch it up, succeeds in making Beery try to say “I’m sorry,” with the shamefaced expression at which he is adept. Later Beery has an even better chance to make up to Gable. He rescues him from drowning, flies him back to the Saratoga, wrecks the plane and kills himself landing in a fog. Beery and Gable, particularly the former, give likable performancesin the oh-yeah manner. Good shot: Gable and Beery coming to blows in a Panama cafe.