Cinema: The New Picture?

Belles on Their Toes (20th Century-Fox), a sequel to 1950’s successful Cheaper by the Dozen* is, like most follow-ups, somewhat of a letdown. Present once more are Efficiency Expert Lillian Gilbreth (Myrna Loy) and her twelve lovable but strenuous children. The rambling scenario, in a flashback to the Pierce-Arrow and Charleston days of the ’20s, focuses on the girls of the family.

Most of the girls seem to have romantic complications. Daughter Anne (Jeanne Grain) almost misses the marital boat by being assistant mother to her younger brothers and sisters. Ernestine (Barbara Bates) has a crush on a college sheik. Budding Belle Martha (Debra Paget) charms an Amherst man when she blossoms out in a bathing suit. Even Widow Gilbreth temporarily titillates Tycoon Edward Arnold.

Just about the only thing missing from this marshmallow melange of Technicolor, tunes, slapstick and sentiment is Clifton Webb, the original Pa Gilbreth, who passed on in Cheaper by the Dozen. In Belles, Webb is seen only in a brief flashback from the earlier film. Unfortunately, he and his acid personality could not be around for the rest of the movie to help counteract the saccharin goings-on.

The Narrow Margin (RKO Radio) is the kind of lowbudget, high-quality movie that the trade calls a “sleeper.” This particular sleeper accommodates some colorful passengers on a Chicago-Los Angeles train. A jut-jawed detective (Charles Mc-Graw) is escorting a gangster’s sloe-eyed widow (Marie Windsor) to be the key witness in a grand jury crime probe. The detective’s problem is to evade a couple of cold-blooded syndicate hoods who have rubbed out the detective’s partner and are now bent on murdering the widow.

As often happens in whodunits, the plot gets derailed at its destination. But on the way the picture rattles along at an exciting express clip. The movie plays fresh variations on a familiar theme in a lean scenario, pungent performances and inventive direction: a gangster car pacing the train is menacingly mirrored in compartment windows as backdrop to the slam-bang action; the cramped train settings are put to striking dramatic effect through expert camera work and cutting. Refreshingly, there are convincing sound effects and no hammering musical score.

Filmed in only 13 days for $192,000, The Narrow Margin was held up for release after its completion in June 1950, by RKO

Boss Howard Hughes, who took it under his wing as the studio’s best low-budget film. Largely on the movie’s merits, Producer Stanley Rubin, 34, onetime TV film producer, was signed as a producer-writer by 20th Century-Fox, and Director Richard Fleischer, 35, son of Animated Cartoon Pioneer Max (Betty Boop, Popeye the Sailor) Fleischer, was handed a directorial contract by Producer Stanley Kramer. For its trigger-paced suspense, their little picture is worthy of being bracketed in the select group of train thrillers headed by Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes and Carol Reed’s Night Train.

* Based on the 1949 bestseller of the same name by Frank B. Gilbreth Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey.