Cinema, Also Showing Aug. 11, 1947

I Wonder Who’s Kissing Her Now (20th Century-Fox) is a Technicolored bio-musical about Songwriter Joe Howard (Mark Stevens). Howard, the story says, started out from a Weehawken, N.J. organ firm; though he was so easy a mark for women that it is hard to see how he found the time, he wrote a good many good tunes, including O, Gee, Be Sweet to Me, Kid; Honeymoon; Hello, My Baby and the title song.

Since this picture is about the U.S. in the ’90s, it opens, inevitably, with a shot of two overstuffed horses hauling a load of beer barrels. There are other inevitabilities. Each time a new girl hears the composer’s music she turns to him and says “You’ve got a lot of talent,” meaning in another field altogether (laughter). There is also a little girl (June Haver) who loves Joe, but he has always thought of her as sort of a kid sister; when he meets her again after long separation and she speaks of marriage, he blurts “Why you’re just a . . .” then inspects her recent developments and shuts his trap (laughter).

I Wonder goes on too long and too slowly. Still, there is some effective singing, stepping and looking, and considering how dull most movie musicals are these days, this one is rather outstanding. By 2 o’clock on its opening day at Manhattan’s Roxy Theater, 11,210 people had paid to see it (plus Abbott & Costello in person), thus breaking all Roxy records.

Welcome Stranger (Paramount), after substituting stethoscopes for round collars, leads Bing Crosby and Barry Fitzgerald down the same green garden path they trod so successfully in Going My Way. Fitzgerald is an aging Down East doctor. Crosby is a sort of medical minnesinger, who comes to substitute while the old man takes a vacation. But Dr. Fitzgerald so thoroughly disapproves of the sporty young fellow that he refuses to budge. From there on they snarl and soothe their way through enough gently amusing quarrels to piece out a feature-length movie. Joan Caulfield, Robert Shayne as a petulant pharmacist, and various other small-town types are also on hand.

Welcome Stranger wisely doesn’t try to compete with its predecessor, and the result, though quite ordinary, is as pleasantly relaxed as Crosby’s singing of My Heart Is a Hobo, Make Mine Country Style. Lively sequence: Crosby is forced to operate on Fitzgerald, who insists on a local anesthetic and sourly back-seat-drives the whole business.