The New Pictures

Wonder Man (Goldwyn-RKO Radio) is a temperate enough description of Danny Kaye in his second full-length movie. Barring Kaye, and the pretty hoof-&-mouthing of the flea-sized, dainty screen newcomer Vera-Ellen, and some sure laughs furnished by S. Z. Sakall as a delicatessen storekeeper, the picture is about as short on drive, sparkle and resourcefulness as a Sam Goldwyn production can be. But fortunately, there is no such thing as barring Danny Kaye. He is a one-man show and, at his frequent best, a howling good one.

Besides being a brilliant comic entertainer, Kaye has considerable talent as a straight actor. Here he gets his first good chance to display this talent, playing two deep-metropolitan types. One is Buzzy Bellew, hard-glazed headliner at the Pelican Club, half insane with self-appreciation; the other is Buzzy's super-identical twin brother Edwin, a meek, bleak, gentle tome-prowler who spends most of his time at the Public Library, and adequately maps out his sensual life When he tells a pretty librarian (Virginia Mayo): "I love the smell of leather bindings."

One night Edwin hears strange music and is irresistibly drawn to a certain bridge in Brooklyn's Prospect Park. There, his brother's white-tied ghost rises from the water, and jazzily explains to the learned goof that Buzzy, star witness in a gangster murder, has been bumped off. The scholar, his double, must replace him at the Pelican, play upon the superstitious sensibilities of his killers, avenge his death by placing his fatal information in the hands of the D.A. (Otto Kruger). Just to help out in hard places, such as impersonating a great floorshow star when you know nothing in words of less than nine syllables, Buzzy's ghost demonstrates that he can enter and take charge of Edwin, body & soul. Complications develop, thanks to Miss Mayo, who has begun to interest Edwin even more than the smell of bindings, and to Pelican-partner Vera-Ellen who, he learns, expects to marry him--as Buzzy--next afternoon. To make matters worse Buzzy's ghost, floored by a hangover, defaults during a crucial interview with the D.A. At last, hounded by gunmen and police alike, the frantic Edwin contrives to costume and beard himself and squall his information to the Law from the bewildered vortex of an opera stage.

Granted what he is given to work with --a first-rate idea developed in second gear --Danny Kaye does a beautiful job. As the scholar he merely sketches charmingly, without perfecting, the humor, pathos and odd dignity the role might have ; but as the nightclub star he is magnificent. At the straight comic setpieces -- the dancing and delivery of the bangtwanging Bali Boogie; the impersonation of a Russian baritone in Laocoonic struggle between his hay fever and Otchi Tchorniya; a glistening little telephonic imitation of a pet shop in full cry, including goldfish; and the hilarious opera climax -- Kaye is a great but still growing virtuoso.

In his comic acting and his comic cadenzas alike there are occasional blurs of mood and insight -- moments which are like being bonged over the head with a champagne bottle instead of savoring the vintage. But they do no serious harm ; they merely show that Danny Kaye is not yet a great comedian. The exciting thing about his work in Wonder Man, aside from the immediate pleasure it gives, is that it shows he may quite possibly become one.

Where Do We Go from Here? (20th Century-Fox) goes in so many directions, into so many grades and kinds of free-wheeling fooling, that it will please practically anybody some of the time and practically nobody all of the time. People who like first-rate finesse will enjoy bits of brisket from Kurt Weill's musical ribroast, the most teasing twists in Ira Gershwin's lyrics, and Alan Mowbray pretending to be Eric Blore pretending to be George Washington. People who like oafishly coy satire about on a par with summer-camp imitations of Gilbert & Sullivan will find stretches of that. Between these broad extremes, however, the show rumbles along Technicolorfully and, on the whole, quite amusingly, with some really bright spots and a lot of others so shamelessly silly that you enjoy them anyway.

The story: an unhappy 4-F (Fred Mac-Murray) is jilted by a toothsome, promiscuous USOgress (June Haver) who at tempts to demonstrate, by song and cumbrous dance routines, that morale means just One Thing to all men. The hero really loves the nice girl (Joan Leslie) who loves him, but he doesn't know it yet. He gets hold of a magic lamp in a scrap-salvage drive. The lamp breaks, and releases a gaily kosher genie (Gene Sheldon). The grateful genie gives him three wishes --which rather confusingly turn out to be four or five.

The first lands him in the Army -- at Valley Forge. His schoolbook hindsight of the Delaware Crossing interests General Washington profoundly. Disguised as a yokel, he also checks up on the taffy-wigged, beet-nosed Hessians in the Trenton Bierstube. By the time he faces a Hessian firing squad, the genie suddenly transplants him spang into the middle of a mutiny against Christopher Columbus (Fortunio Bononova). For this episode Ira Gershwin has written the most trickily tanglefooted of his lyrics and Kurt Weill, assisted by Baritone Carlos Ramirez, has composed a raving parody of wopera. The mutiny ends happily when Columbus spots Cuba (Sloppy Joe's, complete with girls) through his spyglass.

The prophetic hero sails northward to buy wooded Manhattan Island from Indian Chieftain Badger (Anthony Quinn), originator of the Badger Game, for the customary price. Then he plunks forward a hundred years or so into the middle of Knickerbocker Holiday minus Peter Stuyvesant, again meets and at last appreciates Miss Leslie. She gets him talking hindside-to Dutch dialect so automatically that, jailed, he sings An Angel If I Had the Wings Of. When at length the genie gets control of his defective time machine, he restores the hero to the present, in the uniform he wanted all along.

Pillow to Post (Warner) puts several normally serious-minded Warner properties--notably Ida Lupino, Sydney Greenstreet and Director Vincent Sherman--over the hurdles and through the hoops of a fast, old-fashioned farce. The confusions develop when a young lady (Miss Lupino), in order to make sure of a night's rest in a tourist camp, persuades an Army lieutenant (William Prince) to pose as her husband. The picture plants every grain of corn--from a Negro manservant named Lucille to a small boy who puts a bullfrog in the heroine's valise--which might serve to make it indistinguishable from the old Samuel French masterpieces so dear to pre-Coolidge provincial dramatic societies.

Fortunately, however, corn is edible, and the serious thinkers (Miss Lupino, for that matter, started in comedy) turn out to have a nice knack for foolishness. Typical dialogue: Lieut. Prince (lugubriously eyeing Miss Lupine's knee-length nightgown): "I suppose it gives you freedom." Miss Lupino: "Well, that's what we're fighting for isn't it?"

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