The New Pictures

Sweepings (RKO). Daniel Pardway (Lionel Barrymore) arrived in Chicago soon after Mrs. O'Leary's cow kicked over the lamp. He started a shop in the Loop, hired as general manager a smart Jew (Gregory Ratoff) who climbed across the sock counter out of the crowd at a sale. The shop grew into a huge department store called the Bazaar. Daniel Pardway's wife (Nan Sunderland) died before she had time to share Daniel's greatest disappointment: his children. The oldest. Gene, grew up to be a loose-life; the second son was a Tom Thumb esthete; the daughter married and divorced a Prince, adopted a swami; the youngest son seduced a countergirl, grew so brash in his manners that Daniel Pardway had to order him away. All this is the more painful because it is Daniel Pardway's ambition to leave the Bazaar to his offspring. The news that his general manager has bought up shares in the Bazaar which were presented to the Pardway children brings old Daniel to his deathbed. He makes one more oration to his pip-squeak heirs, receives their frail assurances that they will do better in the future.

Sweepings is worthwhile for Lionel Barrymore's full-length portrait of a tight-lipped tycoon and for a smaller but equally perfect study by Gregory Ratoff of the tycoon's jealous but sympathetic underling. Husband of Eugenie Leontovich, a well-known actress in Moscow before the War who acted in Manhattan choruses until Grand Hotel made her famous, Gregory Ratoff's success in the U. S. came a little later than his wife's but with equal suddenness. He was the producer in Once in a Lifetime; his appalling Russo-Semitic accent was what brought him to Hollywood's attention but an infinite skill with certain kinds of characterization are what should prevent the attention from wavering. A poorer picture than Sweepings would be justified by Ratoffs rebuke to a department store Santa Claus whom he catches removing his beard: "Vat are you--Senta Claus or a bum we picked up for two-fifty?"

Pick Up (Paramount). Mary Richards (Sylvia Sidney) gets through with an unfair jail sentence, makes friends with a taxi-driver named Harry (George Raft), starts living with him. He takes up with a Society Girl. Mary's husband breaks out of jail, furious at Mary for being unfaithful, determined to kill her lover. Mary saves Harry's life by pretending to be reconciled with her husband. Then Harry saves Mary in court, when she is accused of having assisted her spouse's jailbreak. All this, cheaply written by Vina Delmar, adds up to another program picture distinguished only for a few sequences in which Raft & Sidney make affectingly plausible the details of a shaky liaison between two urban peewees.

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