The New Pictures

The Gazebo (Avon; M-G-M), Hollywood's reconstruction of the Broadway comedy hit, is a fairly successful piece of graveyard humor. The corpse is provided by a wildly improbable murderer (Glenn Ford), a young Milquetoast who writes and directs TV whodunits, and who takes a potshot one night at a particularly unpleasant blackmailer. When the whodunist sees his first real-life cadaver, he almost faints. When he wraps the body in a plastic tarpaulin, the plastic tears. When he wraps it in a shower curtain and goes to bury it in the fresh foundation of a new gazebo (summerhouse), he discovers that the hole has been filled in by his friendly contractor (John McGiver). At that very moment, in fact, the contractor knocks on his door, then casually walks off with the essential shovel. Moments later a real estate agent appears with somebody who wants to look at the house. Then the phone rings. And even after the poor slaphappy slayer manages to bury the evidence, he has an unpleasant surprise in store: the man he killed was not the blackmailer, who has been found dead in a Manhattan hotel. But then who in Connecticut is the poor stiff?

The answer to this question sets up a hunky-gory conclusion to a plotsy-totsy script; but the actors are no match for the material. Debbie Reynolds, as the murderer's wife, is so cute it hurts. And Hero Ford, an actor who explains every joke with a series of vague, unnecessary gestures, kills more scenes than he does people. Still, a couple of hilarious reels and some nifty dialogue survive:

She: What have you done with [the body]?

He (casually): I put him in the guesthouse.

She (with housewifely indignation): The guesthouse! Elliott, you know I haven't cleaned in there in ages.

Rhapsody of Steel, a 23-minute animated cartoon that cost $300,000, is one of those rare industrial films with enough specific quality and general interest to play the commercial circuits. In the next few months it will be shown as an added attraction in several thousand U.S. movie houses. Made by former Disney Staffer John Sutherland, Rhapsody sets out to tell a sort of child's history of steel from the first meteor that ever hit the earth to the first manned rocket that leaves it, and most of the time Moviemaker Sutherland proves a slick entertainer and a painless pedagogue. Unhappily, the music of Oscar-Winning Dmitri Tiomkin, who is probably the world's loudest composer, bangs away on the sound track like a trip hammer. But the picture's pace is brisk, its tricks of animation are better than cute, and the plug, when the sponsor slips it in on the final frame, is modestly understated: "A presentation of U.S. Steel."

Cash McCall (Warner), the screen version of Cameron (Executive Suite) Hawley's 1955 bestseller, sets a new low in Hollywood's long history of idollartry. The movie's moral: money is the root of all virtue.

For most of the first reel the spectator sees nothing but financial tentacles, as a vast holding company stealthily envelops a small plastics manufacturer (Dean Jagger) and prepares to devour him. Then all at once the head and center of the conspiracy appears, and lo! it is not really a monster after all. It's a tall, dark and handsome young fellow (James Garner, better known as TV's Bret Maverick) who is rich but honest, smart with a heart--a sort of beatified billionaire who suffers terribly because he "can't make anything but money."

Naturally, young Cash McCall has to pay through the nose for this shocking lack of faith in the almighty dollar, but in the end he proves loyal to his principal and stands up boldly to the villain (Roland Winters). "Accept my generous offer," the hero announces in words that are apparently intended to represent the all-American spirit of rough-and-tumble competition, "or go home and cut your throat." The hero of course makes the merger and gets the girl (Natalie Wood), with whom he lives wealthily ever after.

The U.S. system of free enterprise, which has been doing pretty well in recent years, needs this sort of propaganda the way it needs a hole in the safe. And foreign countries, in which this film will be widely shown, may not take too kindly to the thesis--especially when it is propounded by their wealthy Uncle Sam--that the worth of a man can be measured by what he is worth.

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