The New Pictures

Boom Town (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) is the muddy hamlet of Burkburnett, Tex., and things start happening there when Big John MacMasters (Clark Gable) and his friend Square John Sand (Spencer Tracy) bring in a gusher with stolen equipment. Then Square John's girl (Claudette Colbert) comes West and Big John appropriates her. For 20 years Square John and Big John go on mooning over Claudette, bringing in gushers, getting rich and going broke like two big kids on a seesaw. When Big John begins to neglect Claudette for a saucy little baggage named Karen Vanmeer (Hedy Lamarr), Square John decides to wreck the seesaw for good.

By this time Big John and Square John are such sizable fellows that their boyish tussling shakes the U. S. oil industry to its foundations. Big John winds up in the dock facing a Sherman Anti-Trust suit. It looks bad for Big John until Square John repents, takes the witness stand to score on Uncle Sam in the most shameless courtroom bid for an Oscar since Paul Muni's blow for liberty in Zola. At this point Gable redeems himself with the first sensible line in the show. Says he: "I didn't know he had so much ham in him."

Boom Town's assault on the Sherman Act (coming from a major defendant in the pending cinema anti-trust suit) might be excused as an expedient to end a picture that otherwise threatened to go on forever. Like most movies that are built on the theory that four stars are better than one, Boom Town is not so much a picture as a series of personal appearances. Stripped to a suit of balbriggan underwear in one scene, Clark Gable reveals a paunch. Fully clothed throughout, Hedy Lamarr still reveals nothing at all.

The Great McGinty (Paramount). For weeks Hollywood has been aware that Paramount was readying a picture which, despite a small budget, a green director and an unimpressive cast, would be one of the major surprises of the year. Gossip columnists and other hinters had taken some edge from the surprise by the time The Great McGinty was released last week. It was nevertheless a great show.

Dan McGinty (Brian Donlevy) is discovered tending bar in a banana republic when the picture opens. A despondent barfly tells him that he was once cashier in a big bank, and McGinty laughs. "I suppose you were the president of a bank!" says the barfly defiantly. "I," says McGinty, "was the Governor of a State." The camera takes over, tells how.

The McGinty career starts one election day when Dan is picked off the streets, casts 37 votes at $2 apiece. This feat attracts the attention of the Big Boss (Akim Tamiroff), who puts McGinty's broad shoulders and hard fists to work shaking down protection money from recalcitrant clients. Before long McGinty is an alderman, shaking taller trees. When the Big Boss gets tired of the mayor and organizes a reform party to throw him out, he tells McGinty that he can have the job if he gets married. McGinty forms an expedient attachment to a widow (Muriel Angelus) with two children. But Mrs. McGinty has some idealistic notions, and when the Big Boss makes him Governor, poor Dan gets them too. Down goes McGinty.

Written and directed by Playwright Preston Sturges (Strictly Dishonorable), The Great McGinty is shrewd, salty, adroit. It is also an actor's dream. Brian Donlevy makes the dream come true. Son of an Irish whiskey distiller who moved to the U. S. before the war, Brian Donlevy was bred to arms at St. John's Military Academy in Delafield, Wis. He carried on as a bugler with General Pershing's 1916 expedition to Mexico (where he says he developed his barrel chest), flew with the Lafayette Escadrille in France. After that he modeled for Arrow Collars, worked on Broadway. Donlevy likes fishing, prospecting for gold, has a family fondness for whiskey. To liven his cinema slugfests, he sometimes tries to anger his opponents, then let them have it. Otherwise his dis position is peaceful. But he is never joshed on two subjects: his middle name (Waldo) and the toupee he wears professionally.

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