The New Pictures

Every Day's A Holiday (Paramount). In the peculiar idiom of show business, Mae West's art comes under the head of umph. This quality is expressed by sinuous gyrating and prurient murmurings. That this sort of thing will make money is well established. Actress West's last recorded cinema earnings (1936) were $323,000, about as much salary as Bethlehem Steel's president, Eugene G. Grace, and the chairman of its board, Charles M. Schwab, draw down together. That umph sometimes shocks the public is established too (see p. 57).

For Every Day's A Holiday Paramount made a determined effort to de-umph Mae West by vacuum-cleaning the script, disguising Mae in a fantastic black French periwig. But, like trying to purify the water by whitewashing the village pump, it did not work. To situations considerably less potential than the story of Adam & Eve, Actress West imparts a meaning all her own; despite all directorial and script-writing efforts to make her steer a straight course, she still writhes as she pleases. As sexless a game as selling a sucker the Brooklyn Bridge resembles, in the West vernacular, a bargain sale of great temptations.

Other impressions of Every Day's A Holiday: snowy-haired Charles Winninger in typical foxy grandpa mood, Negro Swing-Trumpeter Louis Armstrong leading a torchlight procession, the plushy mustiness of the turn of the century, and a few gags, all mothered and murmured by Miss West. Typical examples: Q. "You mean he made love to you?'' A. "Well, he went through all the emotions. . . ." "Keep a diary and some day it'll keep you. . . ." "She's not as strait-laced as she's laced up to be. . . ."

With the release of Every Day's A Holiday, Paramount and Mae West parted company. She is under contract to Producer Emanuel Cohen, whose production Paramount has sponsored. Last week Producer Cohen and Adolph Zukor, Paramount head, climaxed a four-year feud by calling off their deal. What bothered Paramount more than Mae West's loss was that on Producer Cohen's personal payroll is Crooner Bing Crosby.

Mannequin (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). When Actress Joan Crawford, in the lithe chic of a $2.98 bathing suit, adjusts her shopworn profile to a summer night and sighs to her handsome vis-a-vis, "why do you suppose the moon is always bigger on Saturday night?," a million understanding shopgirl hearts sigh with her. And when, temporarily exalted to a swank Manhattan penthouse, Joan looks over the parapet at the twinkling city, "piled up against the dark," many a less lyric lass wishes that she, too, might sometime be so pent up.

For the last decade, Cinemactress Joan Crawford has been hushaby lady to millions for whom dreams at prevailing box-office prices are the only escape from failure and mediocrity. Her partner in romance is usually some slick-haired reigning actor. In Mannequin, crinkly-eyed, roughhewn Spencer Tracy seems ill at ease, especially with dialogue lines like "somebody hit me with a hypo full of love."

On the whole, however, Mannequin does not depart perceptibly from the customary Crawford orbit--an upsy-daisy chute-the-chutes ride, with shrieks and giggles on the hairpin .turns and a happy splash at the end. With all the shiny morality and cultural lag of an old Will Hays collar, Mannequin tells the tale of a slum girl who tries to dodge her environment by marrying a self-confessed heel, gets a shot from love's hypo herself when she meets an honest tugboat tycoon.

I Met My Love Again (Walter Wanger) puts a favorite poser of slick-paper fiction, viz., whether there is a spark in that old campus romance yet, these ten years later. Its answer is a heart-warming yes, echoing around the shaded quiet of a i Vermont college town. Producer Walter ; Wanger has a theory of picture-making akin to Baseball's immortal Willie Keeler's formula for a good batting average ("Hit 'em where they ain't"). Hence this film, a reworking of the essentials of Allene Corliss' Summer Lightning (cloudbursts & all) aims soberly at the heart where most other cinemakers would aim at the funny bone. Whether the box offices will consider Producer Wanger as nifty a batter as Willie Keeler is another matter. Few Hollywood producers dare strike whimsical notes on the polymorphism of the ant, the physical advantage the paramecium holds over the amoeba. But in the capable hands of Henry Fonda & Joan Bennett, top Wanger stars, and an able cast, / Met My Love A gain's invertebrate allegories, its academic ups & downs, its ten changing years and its sopping-wet windup are invariably diverting, variably brilliant.

Hollywood Hotel (Warner Brothers), is the name of a venerable, no longer pretentious Hollywood hostelry. It is much more widely known, however, as the name of Campbell Soup's weekly radio program in which cinema stars are chattily introduced by No. i Hearst Movie Columnist Louella O. Parsons. The column has national circulation, so in return for mention in the Parsons' jottings, even though their inaccuracy is celebrated, Hollywood obediently sits up and begs. Broadcaster Parsons can get actors on the Campbell hour for nothing, whereas other radio programs lay out large sums for screen names. In return, "Lolly" Parsons makes plenty from Campbell Soup. From Warners she got $40,000 for exhibiting her ample contours at long last to the cinemasses.

At the picture's stagey Hollywood premiere, many a private chuckle mingled with the applause for an amusing, well constructed musical, for Hollywood realized that the Warners script writers and director had just let Lolly be herself.

Aside from a tendency toward orchidaceous fluttering when Lolly holds court, Hollywood Hotel is a zippy modern tune & cutie show, with a notable absence of the vast, garish night-club type of dance routine that Director Busby Berkeley used to be famous for. For story it brings Crooner Dick Powell from the first saxophone chair in Benny Goodman's band to Hollywood, involves him with a temperamental ham actress and her double (Lola & Rosemary Lane), gives him his ups & downs and several opportunities to sing. Ingeniously utilized along the way are such Hollywood staples as high-pressure pressagents, drive-in hamburger stands, confused executives, Hugh (Hoo) Herbert, the late, bellicose Ted Healy, slow-burning Edgar Kennedy, Professional Posturer Alan Mowbray. Chief side attraction: Goodman's Swing Quartet, with Percussionist Gene Krupa swinging out (see p. 58). Chief drawbacks: 1) Orchestra-man Raymond Paige's protracted 70-piece mass attack on the simple Russian melody, Dark Eyes; 2) Louella 0. Parsons.

Louella Parsons has been writing about motion pictures for 23 years, 16 of them in Hollywood for Hearst. One of her earliest jobs was to review the first Mary Pickford picture. When Hollywood Hotel was released, Mary returned the favor. Her critique: "I enjoyed every minute. . . . Louella . . . plays herself m the film, and a very pretty and slender and charming self. In fact Louella is just the same as her many friends in Hollywood know her to be--and I claim that is pretty nice." Appraising herself as a cinemactress, multiple-chinned Louella retired modestly behind the editorial we, vouchsafed that "As an actress we are a good columnist, and even not so bad on the radio."

Early in her career Louella introduced her boss to blonde young Cinemactress Marion Davies, fresh from a Manhattan convent. In the following years her influence and her Hearst salary have grown apace. Seven years ago she married Dr. Harry Watson Martin, Hollywood G. U. man. Boss Hearst's contribution to the $200,000 pile of wedding presents was a $25,000 necklace.

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