The New Pictures

Dancing in the Dark (20th Century-Fox) is a mild, almost listless backstage musical about life around the 20th Century-Fox studio. The kite that lifts it above the average film musical is the full-blown acting of William Powell, whose scene-stealing tricks, held together by a hidden smile, are almost as precise as a Fred Astaire dance routine.

The story is a sudsy yarn about a has-been actor (Powell) who accidentally runs across a daughter (Betsy Drake) he didn't know he had. As a talent-scout for Fox, Powell signs Miss Drake, works late into the night to convert her from a somewhat gawky young woman into a glamourous star, almost fails when she learns that he is the heel who seduced her mother long ago in Springfield, Mass. The story is padded with interesting close-up views of the movie industry in action, against such crucial settings as the office of Cinemogul Darryl F. Zanuck and the forecourt of Grauman's Chinese Theater.

One reason for the charm of this easy-paced movie: the actors are allowed plenty of room to do things their own way.

The Drake-Powell reading of Cyrano is a fascinating sequence in which two actors jump wholeheartedly into dialogue that is beyond their talents. The director's evident doubts about Betsy Drake's unspectacular singing & dancing adds to the whole unstereotyped effect of the show.

The Great Lover (Paramount) is not the finest movie Bob Hope has made, but it will probably satisfy his devoted fans until the next one comes along. Like all the best Hope comedies, this one is synthetic and mechanical enough to spotlight the fine grace and timing of the Master's preposterous posturings.

As the chaperon of a group of Boy Foresters returning from Europe, Hope is surrounded by fellow voyagers who outmaneuver him in every direction and force him to play the role he does best: the fall guy. The Foresters, acting like pint-sized Storm Troopers, try to turn him away from cigarettes, women, late hours and loafing. Meanwhile, he is fleeced by a card sharp, seduced by a bankrupt duchess, snubbed and starved by a wolfhound whose doghouse he shares for a day.

Hope saves most of the stock shipboard monkeyshines with his crisp pantomime, startled doubletake, and the caricatured expression of a lustful idiot. He is ably abetted by Rhonda Fleming, who gives a good imitation of lighthearted depravity.

Oh, You Beautiful Doll (20th Century-Fox) is a carefree musical biography of the late Fred Fisher, one of the most prolific of Tin Pan Alley's numerous geniuses. The plot represents Fisher (S. Z. Sakall) as a serious composer who reluctantly allows a song plugger (Mark Stevens) to chop his opera into several hit tunes. In reality, Fisher was an unabashed tune rustler who once reportedly boasted, "When you buy Fisher, you're getting the best--Chopin, Liszt and Mozart."

The actual Fisher also looked at times like a morose Harold Lloyd, but he is played in the movie by an actor with a rubbery accent, bouncing jowls and a giggle. Most of the real Fisher has been filtered by Hollywood into the Stevens' character: his pugnacious salesmanship and his talent for such song titles as There's a Broken Heart for Every Light on Broadway and Come Josephine in my Flying Machine. In all, Fisher wrote or published a thousand tunes, but he had no connection with the song called Oh, You Beautiful Doll.

Producer George Jessel has a way with loud, gaudy musicals (The Dolly Sisters,

I Wonder Who's Kissing Her Now, When My Baby Smiles at Me) which at best gives them the pleasant frenzy of a circus calliope. But this one seems to take all the wrong paths. Even the Technicolor scenes are draped with heavy shadows that obscure the more interesting characters. The best that can be said of the show is that Gale Robbins and June Haver, both pleasant to look at, do some nice singing and dancing, whenever they get the chance.

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