The New Pictures

The Finger Points (First National). Based on last summer's murder of Alfred "Jake" Lingle, racketeer-reporter for the Chicago Tribune, this picture presents Richard Barthelmess as a cool but callow newshawk who grows rich by blackmailing gangsters. Disappointed in the rewards consequent upon his first scoop, the reporter offers to conceal further news of illegal enterprises if their promoters share the profits with him. When another reporter gets the story of a gangland gambling layout, gangsters blame the racketeer-reporter, perforate him. Routine exaggerations--of a hardboiled city editor, a thundering "Big Guy''--combine to make The Finger Points an unconvincing morality play.

The Conquering Horde (Paramount). This picture includes all the sequences acceptable to fanciers of western pictures. Carpetbaggers follow herds across the border and are harassed by a cowboy (Richard Arlen) whose ulterior motive is love for a beautiful but pure girl (Fay Wray).

A Hollywood high-school miss who took lessons from a tutor while playing her first lead eight years ago, Fay Wray has since distinguished herself by extreme versatility in incongruous roles. Mauritz Stiller gave her a leading part in Street of Sin. Later she was billed with Gary Cooper as one of "Paramount's Glorious Young Lovers." In The Finger Points (see above) Actress Wray impersonates a sweetly scrupulous girl reporter.

Fifty Million Frenchmen (Warner). Two years ago most producers, feeling that the novelty of sound in pictures could best be capitalized in songs and dances, filmed a succession of musical comedies. When these were overworked, reaction inspired the theory that no musical comedies could be successful in the cinema. Applying this mistaken generality to Fifty Million Frenchmen, Warner Bros, neglected to include in it Cole Porter's score which made it a Broadway hit in 1929.

What remains of Fifty Million Frenchmen is trivial comedy about a young American in Paris who wins a bet that he can earn enough money to get along and make friends with a pretty girl.

Laugh and Get Rich (RKO). Small-town boarding houses are still a pre-eminent locale for a certain kind of unpretentious comedy, usually built around the lady who runs the boarding house, her loafer husband, her pretty daughter, the star and other boarders. In Laugh and Get Rich, written by Douglas MacLean who four years ago was a famed comedian, the star boarder is a swindler. Another boarder dabbles in inventions. Both are interested in the pretty daughter. The swindler persuades the landlady's husband to steal his wife's money, buy stock in an oil company. The inventor's device--to provide whistling valves on flat tires--is sold for a large sum. As farce, it is weak as barley-water.

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