The New Pictures

Down to Earth (Fox) is a typical Will Rogers comedy. The chief charm of his pictures lies in the easy, colloquial garglings of Funnyman Rogers. Rogers is Pike Peters, an Oklahoma oil nabob who tugs darkly at his sloppy felt hat while he contemplates his wife (Irene Rich), who loves giving lavish parties, and his son (Matty Kemp), who buys a $17,000 Rolls-Royce second hand for $9,000 and tells his father that he has made $8,000 profit. Rogers: "Say, son, that's fine. You'll be a millionaire if you can keep on doing that." Presently Pike Peters is bankrupt. This gives him a chance to discharge his butler, whom he hates, and to meet an old friend, the Grand Duke Michael. The Grand Duke (Theodore Lodi) has become a hotel doorman. As is customary in pictures dealing with financial reverses, Depression is shown to have a silver lining. The Peters family, awakened to the joys of simple living, take up residence in a shack, where Pike Peters happily cooks his own meals.

Blessed Event (Warner), last of the cycle of colyumist pictures, is adapted from the play by Manuel Seff & Forrest Wilson which started the cycle when it was produced in Manhattan last year. Colyumists in the cinema are usually embroiled with gangsters and Colyumist Alvin Roberts (Lee Tracy) is no exception. He is sufficiently lacking in decency and a sense of news values to lead off his colyum with the information that an unmarried radio singer is about to have a child. When he learns that the child's father is a suburban racketeer it places him in the embarrassing position of "knowing too much." More true to genre than Colyumist Robert's embroilment with the 'racketeer, his devotion to his aged mother, or his engagement to a female critic (Mary Brian), is his altercation with a cabaret crooner (Dick Powell). While forcing his way into the lavish opening night of the crooner's cabaret, Colyumist Roberts gives the racketeer a chance to shoot at him, gives himself a chance to atone to the singer.

Pace, local color and wit are the proper ingredients for comedies like Blessed Event. It has some of all three and a series of minor episodes proper to a picture which treats Broadway as the heart of the world. When a pressagent offering a reporter whiskey says: "It's been analyzed," the reporter (Frank McHugh) says: "Lots of things are analyzed that I wouldn't want to drink." Good shot: Lee Tracy swallowing his profanity for the benefit of Tsar Will Hays when he says, "I wish to God I'd never done it."

The Isle of Paradise (Independent). In the last year or two, a great deal has been heard about Bali, the Dutch East Indian island whose natives live like Utopians and raise three crops of rice a year. Reporter Hickman Powell wrote a book, The Last Paradise, about Bali; Caricaturist Miguel Covarrubias last year exhibited his Balinese paintings; Balinese musicians astonished Paris two years ago. The Isle of Paradise, first feature-length cinema on the subject, will multiply the already large number of people who long to go to Bali. It shows a Balinese day from sunrise to sunset. There is nothing very startling about what goes on, but it all seems very pleasant. The cheerful natives, amazingly handsome, dressed for hot weather, have all the paraphernalia of civilization except machines. They spend the morning marketing, chatting, weaving, carving statues, attaching gold leaf to bolts of cloth, swimming, raising rice, flying kites with prodigious, sarcastic tails. Main event of a high-grade Bali day is a cremation, preceded by dances, bull races, prayers. Corpses of dead Balinese are placed in ornamental towers mounted on floats to be carried about the island. After a cremation, the ashes are scattered in the sea.

Charles Tillyer Trego, who made The Isle of Paradise, first saw Bali when he was working in Cunard Line's advertising department, preparing advertisements for world" cruises. He went back with a camera, found it easy to bribe natives with rings, shirts, hardware, to perform. One mishap occurred: 15 Balinese, tipsy on mild wine and carrying a cremation tower, ran over him and his camera. His picture, the leisurely record of a six-month visit, is beautifully photographed and has the warm, informal authenticity that most travelogs lack. Good shot: a Balinese youth (Trego's valet, who refused to leave Bali for any salary) smiling slowly as he watches a dance.

The Night Club Lady (Columbia). Scheduled for last week at Manhattan's Paramount Theatre was Night Mayor, patterned after New York's slick James J. ("Jimmy") Walker who resigned last week. It was suppressed, and The Night Club Lady, a murder mystery in which all the suspects have a motive for killing the victim, substituted. Police Commissioner Thatcher Colt (Adolphe Menjou) is a wrestling devotee who constantly demonstrates new holds to his drunken friend Tony (Skeets Gallagher). Learning that Lola Carewe (Mayo Methot), a blackmailing night club hostess, has had her life threatened, he takes Tony and six detectives to her apartment, mounts guard. Sitting in a circle of detectives Hostess Carewe awaits the zero hour, listens nervously to appropriate wisecracks from drink-befuddled Tony. Promptly at 12:01, the appointed hour, she screams, drops dead.

Finding no visible marks on her body, mystified Commissioner Colt orders an autopsy. Next day he calls all the suspects to his house, announces that they all have criminal records, bids them good day. Only clew to the murder is a small bamboo tube which is missing after the meeting. Going to the home of Dr. Lengle (William von Brincken) Commissioner Colt finds the tube, and Lengle dead. The contents of the tube make audiences gasp. Explanation of the murders causes natural historians to scoff.

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