B-Hive

In the midsummer doldrums, with most of the A-budget productions as drab as the overcast sky and as treacly as its sunlight, some brisk, modest B pictures are brightening the outlook considerably. Last spring's rapid-fire Dillinger (Monogram), made at a cost of $145,000, has already grossed $900,000. Last fall's vivid When Strangers Marry (Monogram) is less of a moneymaker but one of the best of the Bs. By last week, cinemaddicts were talking up two more good new ones.

Out of the Night (PRC Pictures), which suggests an infinitely diluted yet engaging version of Hamlet, is the story of an intelligent, intuitive youth (James Lydon), whose dreams cause him to suspect that his father did not die by accident. He further suspects that the man (Warren William) who is about to marry his mother (Sally Eilers) was the murderer. Helped by his sweetheart (Mary McLeod) and an older friend (Regis Toomey), and dangerously hindered by the suitor and his crooked psychoanalyst henchman (Charles Arnt), the youth turns his dreams into capital evidence. The picture is not strong on suspense, but as straight drama much of it is alive, simple and likable, because everyone concerned is engaged not only in telling the story but also in the relationships and emotions of the characters for their own sake.

Ten Cents a Dance (Columbia), like Out of the Night, succeeds at once intersely handling an artificial but by no means dull story, and in making its people and their surroundings true-to-life. The story concerns the efforts, of two taxi-dancers (Jane Frazee, Joan Woodbury) and their boss (John Calvert) to get money out of two soldiers (Jimmy Lloyd, Robert Scott). The charm of the picture is in the redolent staging of scenes in the dance hall, at a jam session, a crap game; and in the fact that all these characters perform as unaffectedly as if they had no idea there was a camera around--or even that movie characters must be either utterly good or utterly evil. In its wholly unpretentious way, this is easily the most sympathetic picture yet made about soldiers on the town.

Such movies are not important, or even as entertaining and well-made as a little more working time could make them. They are just the humble small change of American cinema. But the change, however small, is honest coin; whereas too many of cinema's million-dollar checks are signed in invisible ink and made of ersatz rubber.

CURRENT &. CHOICE The Fleet That Came to Stay (U.S. Navy v. Kamikaze at Okinawa; TIME, Aug. 13).

Anchors Aweigh (Frank Sinatra, Gene Kelly, Kathryn Grayson, Jose Iturbi; TIME, July 30).

Story of G.I. Joe (Burgess Meredith, Robert Mitchum, Freddie Steele; TIME, July 23).

A Thousand and One Nights (Cornel Wilde, Evelyn Keyes; TIME, July 16).

Back to Bataan (John Wayne, Anthony Quinn, Beulah Bondi; TIME, July 9).

Rhapsody in Blue (Robert Alda, Oscar Levant, Joan Leslie; TIME, July 2).

Blood on the Sun (James Cagney, Sylvia Sidney; TIME, June 25).

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