New Picture

Rose of Washington Square (Twentieth Century-Fox) is prefaced by the customary assurance that any resemblance to fact is purely "coincidental." This legal formula has never rung more hollowly. The picture chronicles the rise of Mammy-Singer Al Jolson, renamed Ted Cotter and played by Al Jolson. Ted's good friend in the picture is one Rose Sargent (Alice Faye), a Ziegfeld star whose worthless husband (Tyrone Power) besmirches her name by fleeing justice after he becomes involved in a bond scandal. Rose vows her loyalty and, by sobbing out from the Ziegfeld stage the song My Man, persuades her husband to give himself up, plead guilty and take a five-year prison sentence. My Man was introduced by Ziegfeld Star Fannie Brice in 1920, when her husband, Nicky Arnstein, was wanted by the police for a stock swindle./-

Inferior as melodrama, Rose of Washington Square is tops as a vehicle for displaying the talents of two superlative song pluggers. Plugger Jolson, still leather-lunged at 52, blacks his face and shouts

My Mammy, California, Here I Come, Pretty Baby. Though Plugger Faye's My Man lacks the poignant tragicomedy with which homely Fannie Brice invested it, her cool contralto and cozy curves are still cinemusically perfect. Some of the numbers old & new she ably croons and sighs: I'm Just Wild About Harry, I'm Sorry I Made You Cry, I Never Knew Heaven Could Speak (the last by Mack Gordon & Harry Revel).

Cinemactor Power's third appearance with Alice Faye (others: In Old Chicago, Alexander's Ragtime Band) is his first picture released since his marriage to

French Cinemactress Annabella last month, the first test of whether matrimony will cut down his phenomenal feminine following. Slushed Louella ("Lolly") Parsons in her Hearst column last fortnight: "Frankly, and if I can judge by the batch of letters that have come to this desk recently, the youngsters are brokenhearted (at least for the moment) over the marriage of their hero, Ty Power. Mildred and Harold Lloyd told me their two daughters practically went into a decline when they heard."

/- Nicky Arnstein (real name: Jules W. Arndt Stein) also turned himself in, but did not plead guilty. After two trials he was convicted, sentenced to two years in Leavenworth.

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