The New Pictures

Young Nowheres (First National). This is a light story but a real one and it moves along its slender path without slipping--except perhaps once or twice-- into the sentimental bogs that lie all round it. Far from routine cinema stuff is the romance between an elevator boy and the girl who came to clean an apartment in his building. These two have been brought into night court by a rich tenant who accuses them of using his apartment for immoral purposes while he was away. They tell their story in court and what they tell is that in every big city there are people who are never alone. Richard Barthelmess runs the elevator and Marion Nixon is the girl who sits by the fire when the apartment owner comes home. Best sequence: what can happen when you have no rubbers.

Why Bring That Up? (Paramount). "Always remember that the early bird catches the worm. . . . The early bird catches what worm? . . . Why, any worm. . . . Well, what about it? . . . He catches it, that's all. . . . Well, let him have it. I played the horn in the Metropolitan Opera Company. I was the head man in that show. . . . Oh, you've been in better shows than that. ... I hope to tell you. I was in Neil O'Brien's minstrels, I was head man in that show. I was way ahead of everybody. . . . I'll bet you was so far ahead you wasn't even in it. ... Then I was in that sad show called Uncle Tom's Cabin. I was the head man in that show. . . . Oh, some little old country show I never heard of. ... You never heard of Uncle Tom's Cabin? . . . No, I never heard of it. ... Did you ever hear of Adam and Eve? ... I heard of them, but you wasn't the head man in that show. ..." Such is the talk that George Moran and Charles E. Mack have been reciting for two years in vaudeville, into microphones, on phonograph records. Such talk makes fine comedy out of this little sketch, based on a story by Octavus Roy Cohen and directed by Playwright George Abbott, concerning the temptations of a blackface show team. Sunny Side Up (Fox). When officials at the Fox lot found out that Janet Gaynor could sing nicely in a piping, gentle voice and that Charles Farrell, the other member of one of the greatest box-office teams in the business had a fair tenor, it seemed only logical to arrange a musical comedy for them.

Sunny Side Up is a narrative stencil and its dialog is the sort of talk that is fortunately seldom heard except in musical comedies, but since nobody goes to a show like this looking for wit or a good story these defects are not serious. De Sylva, Brown and Henderson's lyrics are effective, particularly the ballad for Miss Gaynor, "I'm a Dreamer, Aren't We All?" and "If I had a Talking Picture of You." Even if you cannot be seriously concerned with the outcome of Miss Gaynor's thwarted love for the rich boy whose fiancee she has agreed to make jealous you realize that as far as singing and dancing goes this picture is better than most Broadway shows. Best shot: an ensemble in which igloos and property snow melt into the ground, out of which, while the chorus keeps stepping, rise tropical plants and palm trees.

Disraeli (Warner). The efforts of a Jewish prime minister of England in 1875 to buy a public utility for his kingdom have been made into a picture as exciting as a detective story. This is odd but it is odder still that, although Louis Parker's old play is no more than effective theatrical plum pudding, it should seem at times almost literary. Both of these facts are principally due to George Arliss, who has played Disraeli so often on the stage that if set back 60 years he could probably double for him in the House of Commons. He gets across the complicated plot, making you believe in the crafty little minister who loved peacocks, gardening, and Queen Victoria, and whose servants were all Russian spies. Best shot: Arliss making the Governor of the Bank of England sign the check that bought the Suez Canal.