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The Fight for Better Schools (MARCH OF TIME) is a blue print for grass-roots action to right a widespread U.S. wrong:

third-rate education in overcrowded, ram shackle schools. This documentary focuses on the painstaking three-year fight by plain citizens of Virginia's Arlington County to get better public education for their children. By glossing over their opposition (real-estate interests, a cynical political machine), the film passes up dramatic conflict. But as a detailed primer on rescuing a down-at-heels school system, it suggests a solid public service and offers inspiring evidence that aroused parents can get results when they take their problems into their own hands.

My Friend Irma (Paramount), as millions of radio fans know, is a dizzy, alluringly dumb blonde. Cy Howard, her CBS creator and co-author of the screenplay, has seen to it that in her first screen appearance, Irma (Marie Wilson) is just as her fans would have her. She keeps the butter in the oven, the egg beater under a sofa cushion; she short-circuits the plans of her boy friend (John Lund) and her roommate (Diana Lynn), and in general does everything in the least rational way possible. None of this is very funny and much of it is downright silly. But since almost all of Irma's blunders turn out right in the end, the audience is left with the possibly comforting thought that stupidity is simply the longest way round to happiness.

Also present for their first movie appearance: Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, a funny song & gag team from radio and the nightclubs.

She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (Argosy Pictures; RKO Radio). Ten years ago Director John Ford made Stagecoach, a rattling good western. His new picture is no Stagecoach.

The background is another dramatic period of U.S. history: the fierce Indian uprisings that followed Custer's last stand. But despite hordes of hopping-mad Cheyennes in full war paint, there is not a first-class Injun fight in the whole film. For some unaccountable reason the hair-raising possibilities of authentic history have been submerged in the muddled and often maudlin story of an overaged cavalry officer (John Wayne) in a U.S. Army outpost. More unaccountably, the paste-pot yarn was put together by two veteran scripters: Frank Nugent and Laurence Stallings.

Every now & then--in shots of stampeding horses and the handling of human beings against the great outdoors--there are fleeting reminders of Ford's best films. But mostly, Yellow Ribbon is a sad waste of talent and Technicolor.

Song of Surrender (Paramount) describes the adventures of a backwoods Cinderella (Wanda Hendrix) living in turn-of-the-century New England with a stern husband (Claude Rains) old enough to be her father. The pumpkin which gets her away from it all is a primitive talking-machine and a handful of Caruso recordings which she keeps hidden in a hillside cave for solitary recitals. Her prince charming is a rich city slicker (Macdonald Carey) who whisks her off to a nearby metropolis for an innocent, giddy evening of champagne and waltzes.

The little escapade plunges the young people into a pretty kettle of fishy dilemmas and New England puritanism. In fact, it takes Director Mitchell Leisen, Paramount's special maestro of the improbable, another full reel to simmer their problems down to a happy ending. Most improbable bit: "Deacon" Henry Hull's rich mint-julep accent served up as a deep-dish Yankee drawl.

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