The New Pictures

Doctor Rhythm (Paramount), which enjoys the services of Crooner Bing Crosby, British Mimic Beatrice Lillie, and a rare collection of cinemerry-andrews, is a tittery tuning-up of 0. Henry's fable, The Badge of Policeman O'Roon. At its best when Comedian Crosby is singing his two hit songs, On the Sentimental Side and My Heart Is Taking Lessons, it also puts a good foot forward with a breathless gypsy dance. But whether Actress Lillie's brand of humor is obvious enough for cinema tastes is an open question which Doctor Rhythm leaves still unanswered.

In private life Lady Peel, Canadian-born widow of a British peer, Actress Lillie is, at 40, the brittle darling of the English-speaking stage for her merciless take-offs of less sophisticated darlings. Her first appearance on the screen, in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayers silent Exit Smiling (1926) sent audiences unsmiling away. Four years later, her Fox talkie, Are You There?, brought no warmer response. The Lillie repertory in Doctor Rhythm contains a few skits theatre audiences have not seen. She still has lingual difficulty ordering two dozen double damask dinner napkins, she still galumphs airily through light opera lampoons. But to many cinemagoers her primping, shimmy-shaking travesty on the leather-lunged school of hot-cha singing may seem less a parody than an amateur-hour attempt at something Ethel Merman can do much better.

Under Western Stars (Republic) introduces a new singing cowboy, compact, blue-eyed, diffident Roy Rogers (real name: Leonard Slye). What makes his debut notable is that the song he sings is of social significance. On the sere cinema range ridden by twangy Roy Rogers no grazing buffalo roam. Most of the time the Western stars are blotted out by great, rolling clouds of dust. In the discouraging words of Dust, Cowboy Rogers laments:

Cattle and the sheep

Bedded down to sleep,

Seem to realize their fate. . .

Dust, dust, must it be,

Can this be Eternity?

Elected to Congress, Cowboy-Congressman Rogers feels like a matted maverick in well-groomed Washington. But when he discovers that hoity-toity capital society functions as purposefully as a medicine show, he puts on a show of his own with motion pictures of his constituents' plight, gets Federal attention for his district's man-made "drouth."

To crooning Cowhand Gene Autry, top man in his calling and Hollywood's fanciest-chapped Western star, Newcomer Roy Rogers is more than a passing threat. Crooner Autry, picked three years ago from the radio and schooled in lyric foofaraw to start the singing cowboy school of Westerns, is currently holding out for more than the $5,000 a picture he has been getting from Republic Pictures. In an effort to frighten him back into the corral for the twelve pictures planned for him, Republic picked Rogers from a minor role in Autry's last film, The Old Barn Dance, starred him in the current cinema, which was originally called Washington Cowboy. A 25-year-old, Wyoming-born Indian-Irish-American, Roy Rogers smiles like old Western Star Gary Cooper, rides like a streak, does everything Autry does for about one-fifth of Autry's salary.

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