The New Pictures

Joan of Paris (RKO-Radio) is a U.S. coming-out party for an attractive pair of European refugees: France's green-eyed Michele Morgan and Austria's Paul Henreid. Both make graceful bows. Mile. Morgan is an arresting personality, whose role calls for only a minimum of acting.

Joan is concerned with the present fortunes of Occupied France. Hero Henreid is a Free French R.A.F. pilot shot down near Paris with his bomber crew; Heroine Morgan is a Parisian barmaid who, like a latter-day St. Joan, sacrifices herself that the R.A.F.ers may escape to England.

Because it is virtually impossible to make current history credible on the screen, Joan is more melodrama than tragedy. But Director Robert Stevenson knows how to curl the hair: he moves his camera with breath-holding suspense through the Gestapo shadows of occupied Paris.

Ominous is the word for Alexander Granach's performance as a Gestapo bloodhound. The squat, square-headed, muscle-bound sleuth ticks along with the sinister near silence of a clock. He never speaks; his approach is heralded by the patient squeak of his shoes. Actor Granach knew his role well. One of Germany's best actors, but a Jew, he escaped from his country a stride ahead of the real Gestapo.

Joan of Paris is the coproduct of two Hollywood youngsters whose backgrounds, untypical of the popular idea of Hollywood, suggest the change that has slowly been taking place in the movies since they learned how to talk.

Producer David Hempstead, 33, broad-browed and volatile, who broke the Hollywood ice with Kitty Foyle, quit his job as Utah's Corporation Commissioner to become an RKO script reader at $30 a week. Son of a well-fixed Salt Lake City attorney, Hempstead talked to Hollywood's elder statesmen from the start in the language they understood. "You're just exactly 150% wrong!" became his standard utterance.

He also settled down (as writer, assistant producer, etc.) to learn the business. He once had a derby-hatted wooden Oscar made for himself, with the inscription: "In honor of Nunnally Johnson [astute producer and Hempstead crony] and David Hempstead, who are exactly 22 1/2 years ahead of their time." Says he: "Oscar is to remind me I'm good; the derby hat to keep me from getting swell-headed about it."

Unlike his night-blooming colleague, meticulous Robert Stevenson, 36, moved into his directorship with the precision of a mathematics teacher. Son of an English businessman, he took a "first" in mathematics at Cambridge University. A postgraduate thesis on the psychology of the cinema got him so interested in the subject that he persuaded Gaumont-British to take him on as a reader.

Not until six years ago did Stevenson consider himself fit to direct a picture. By that time he knew his business, had visited Germany and France to study their excellent camera technique. The public liked his first picture (Tudor Rose), and Hollywood liked his second (Nine Days a Queen), offered him a contract. Says he: "There probably won't be a great movie made until the year 2000. Why? It took 1,800 years to produce a Beethoven, 1,600 years to produce a Rembrandt."

Mr. Bug Goes to Town (Fleischer-Paramount) is Max Fleischer's second venture (first: Gulliver's Travels) into the full-length cartoon, a realm in which Walt Disney is king. No menace to King Disney, Mr. Bug is a workmanlike effort designed for youngsters.

Mr. Bug sensibly eschews the fantasy which has given Disney's animal characters their extraordinary appeal. It is a straight-out Hollywood drama of the decline & fall of a community of insects living in an abandoned weed patch just 45 inches from Broadway. It is also the story of one Hoppity, likeable, doltish grasshopper, who thwarts the villainous plot of rich C. Bagley Beetle to entice Honey, an ingenue bee, into marrying the old codger for his money.

Conceived on the diminutive scale of Gulliver's Travels, Mr. Bug gives an entertaining insect's-eye-view of Manhattan and its "human ones." Its color and atmosphere are first-rate; it is in good taste, and not overdone.

But the best of Mr. Bug's attributes is its music. The background music (by Leigh Harline, who composed most of Snow White's good music, Pinocchio's music and melodies) is notable. One tune by Sammy Timberg (Boy, Oh Boy), five by Hoagie Carmichael (lyrics: Frank Loesser) are hummable. We're the Couple in the Castle has already become a nationwide hit.

Johnny Eager (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) is another attempt to hirsutize handsome Robert Taylor. This hair-raising campaign began several years ago, when the studio got the disturbing idea that its dark, curly-locked matinee idol (and big box-office asset) might be laughed off the screen if he didn't get tough. Since then he has played, successively, a prize fighter, mule skinner, outlaw.

This time Mr. Taylor is a gangster--and a heel to boot. On parole from a manslaughter rap, he manages to run a city, a dog-race track, various forms of gambling. He beats people up--one of them luscious Lana Turner, stepdaughter of the district attorney (Edward Arnold). For love of her, he eventually does himself in.

It's no use. Mr. Taylor won't toughen up. He's too nice to be a melodramatic mobster, and he shows it. Lana Turner is similarly handicapped: Metro has swathed her best assets in a toga, swears that she shall become an actress, or else. Under these adverse circumstances, Stars Taylor and Turner are working under wraps.

Ride 'Em Cowboy (Universal) is not the funniest of the five Abbott & Costello comedies whelped by Universal last year. But it is a reasonably comic kickoff for the ex-burlesque comedians' second year in big-time cinema. Their first year moved them from almost zero to third in national box-office popularity.

A Western dude ranch is new ground for Clown Costello. He never discovers the difference between the Cleveland Indians (baseball) and the American Indians (scalps), but he finds out that a cow does not give milk--"You got to take it away from her." Decked out in chaps, checked cowboy shirt and sombrero, Greaseball Lou Costello is a dead ringer for New York City's Fiorello H. LaGuardia.

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