Cinema: The New Pictures: Sep. 9, 1940

The New Picutre

Young People (20th Century-Fox). Legend has established U. S. vaudevillians as loudmouthed, softhearted, pertinacious vagabonds. It has established New Englanders as grim, laconic moralists. According to Young People it takes an act of God to reveal the goodness in either. When Joe and Kit Ballantine (portly Jack Oakie and aging Charlotte Greenwood), a veteran song & dance team, decide to give their dimpled foster daughter Wendy (Shirley Temple, retired) a solid New England background, they leave the footlights for a Vermont farm. In the obvious conflict that ensues, the natives win hands down.

But a hurricane brings out the hoofers in their true colors, convincing Vermont that outward appearances of ill breeding are false tests of character.

This bit of fluff was Zanuck’s choice for Shirley Temple’s 22nd feature-length film and final picture for Fox, where she was the nation’s No. 1 box-office attraction for four years, an Oscar winner, the corporation’s biggest single asset. The opening scenes of Young People, covering her progress from waif to world wonder, permit two shots from her earlier films when her wobbly dancing warmed the hearts of millions. Now & then she rasps out such reminiscent ditties as Young People and Tra, La, La, La.

Last May, when the film was completed, it was gravely announced that Shirley Temple,11, was temporarily retiring from the screen. Her previous picture, a gaudy, $1,000,000 adaptation of The Bluebird, was still in the red, and Shirley’s huge foreign market had gone off to war. So Fox handed Shirley an accumulated bonus of $300,000, packed up the toys in her studio bungalow and wished her luck.

For the past year Shirley has studied at the Westlake School for Girls, a private country day school for daughters of polite Los Angeles families. There she has made her first real acquaintance with her own generation. Friends already observe subtle changes in her personality. She wears long dresses to formal school dances and tolerates women who gush: “Shirley, I hope my daughter grows up to be just like you.”

A Pontiac station wagon shuttles Shirley from school to her house in fashionable Brentwood, where she scampers about with her onetime stand-in (Mary Lou Isleib), Harold Lloyd’s two daughters, the Brentwood Campfire Girls, Westlake schoolmates. Fortnight ago home was made more interesting by the completion of an elaborate playhouse with an auditorium seating 85, a room for her collection of rare dolls, a basement with bowling alley and ping-pong table, a room for framing and filing prize fan mail.

While rumors flew about stage, radio and movie offers, Mrs. Temple quietly explained: “Shirley will definitely not retire. She’s more interested than ever in her dancing, and I’m sure we’ll do at least one picture a year. However, I want Shirley to have the opportunity to get a normal schooling, so we won’t make any plans which will keep her as busy as she has been in the past.” One rumor—that smart little Producer Joseph Pasternak would team her with Fred Astaire—exploded last week, although Shirley, in one of her frequent pranks, had recently paid Pasternak’s ace director, Henry Roster, ten cents to make the film. Meantime she is touring California with her mother before entering the eighth grade.

Rhythm on the River (Paramount) brings back the heterogeneous talents of Funnyman Oscar Levant to the big-time cinema after an eleven-year pause. Fresh from successful sallies into literature (A Smattering of Ignorance) and radio (In formation, Please), Levant revives his movie career as the surly, acidulous secretary of a charlatan song writer (Basil Rathbone). This gives him a chance to rattle off some facile trills on conveniently placed pianos, berate the musical ignorance of the surrounding characters, growl an occasional wry witticism through his cavernous, smoke-filled mouth.

Otherwise, Rhythm on the River (not to be confused with Rhythm on the Range) is like the best Bing Crosby musicals which preceded it. With the quiet simplicity of a nursery rhyme it unrolls the fable of a lazy composer (Crosby) who collaborates with a pretty, ambitious lyricist (Mary Martin) in knocking out the popular tunes which make Basil Rathbone a Manhattan social superba. When Crosby and Martin set out to write under their own names they are accused of stealing the Rathbone style, tramp the edges off their heels in vain visits to song publishers. With this tissue-thin plot Director Victor Schertzinger has managed to string to gether 90 minutes of first-rate crooning by Crosby and Martin, lively trumpeting by famed one-armed Swingster Wingy Mannone, some casual, restful reading of Scenarist Dwight Taylor’s smooth lines.