The New Pictures

Westward Ho the Wagons! (Walt Disney; Buena Vista) is Walt Disney's latest essay in gopher realism--a western so relentlessly authentic that at times the script seems to have been written in smoke signals. One of the prairie schooners is a genuine survivor of the Colorado gold rush, the calumet used at the powwow is supposed to have been sucked by Sitting Bull himself. Producer Disney has even hired one of the world's leading experts in Indian sign language, fellow name of Iron Eyes Cody, to teach those studio Indians how to speak their lines. Nothing doing. After quite a few reels of furtive finger-wiggling, the hired Hiawathas simply quit the kidding, and one of them, with every line of his body expressing his profound relief, declares: "Ugh."

As time goes (ever so slowly) by, the rest of the cast seem to relax and act natural-like too. The hero (Fess Parker) gulps and cuts in on the heroine (Kathleen Crowley) at the hoedown. The braves at the war dance start truckin' on down to that red-hot ethnic music. And here they come! "Get 'em movin'," Hero Parker hollers--"Ah'll cover the r'ar!" The race to the pass begins.

The picture is over? You can bet your week's wampum it isn't. That Oregon trail was 2,000 miles long, and Realist Disney seems determined to make the moviegoer jolt, bolt or Colt his way over every dad-burned mile of it.

Written on the Wind (Universal-International) opens with Rock Hudson, geologist for a Texas oil company, taking Lauren Bacall, a secretary, to lunch at a swank Manhattan saloon where there is no telling what a pretty girl may be offered after the dessert. There she meets Robert Stack, an oil millionaire who quickly establishes the fact that he is a rich Texan by debonairly putting out his cigarette in a glass of champagne. Texan Stack asks Lauren to go for a ride before going back to the office. She accepts. Some hours later, the ride ends in Miami, where the Texan's two-motor transport lands. He phones ahead to a local inn, and, lo, Lauren is led a few minutes later to a sumptuous suite where vases are filled with roses, tables laden with fruit, closets packed with gowns, shelves lined with hats, and bureau drawers jammed with whatever else a rich Texan's Cinderella should put on and take off. Sizing things up, Lauren decides that her lunch hour has lasted long enough and starts back for the office. When her admirer catches up, he asks: "Did I overdo it?" Says Lauren: "I was tempted, but I began to think of how I would hate myself in the morning.''

This chaste sentiment convinces him that he loves her, and his dishonorable intentions become honorable. So they get married. Unfortunately, the sudsy plot is only just getting under way. The moviegoer who decides to sit it out can watch Dorothy Malone play a nymphomaniac who has a yen for Rock Hudson, who, in turn, has a yen for Lauren, who gets slapped around by Stack, who eventually shoots himself accidentally, which enables Rock and Lauren to fall into each other's arms at last.

Top Secret Affair (Warner) is a comedy of bad manners. They are largely exercised by a newsmagazine tycoon (Susan Hayward), aided by her editor (Paul Stewart), upon a famed combat general (Kirk Douglas). The general believes that there are only two kinds of women: mothers and the others. The female tycoon believes that there are only two kinds of men, "and I can handle both." Each, by profession, is determined to have his own way. When she decides to do a cover story on him, exposing him as a blabbermouth and general incompetent, the stage appears to be set for a battle of giants. He is interviewed at her Long Island mansion for four days and four nights, during which he exasperatingly fails to say a single word to incriminate himself. In fact, he answers all the loaded questions with what the scriptwriter plainly regards as brilliance. Sample question: "What should the com bat officer do in peacetime?" Answer: "Drop dead."

But he doesn't, and the movie drags on for 100 minutes, during which she falls in love with him. is rejected, publishes her expose (which starts a Senate investigation), publicly admits she printed a pack of lies about the general and, in the last frame, wins him as her very own. To film this unlikely tale, a John P. Marquand novel, Melville Goodwin, USA (TIME, Oct. 1, 1951), was bought and, in true Hollywood fashion, not used. Instead, the story merely borrowed the names and professions of Marquand's characters and was thrown together as a frothy comedy, presumably on the theory that if a plot is silly enough, it is bound to be funny. It isn't.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.