The New Pictures

Under a Texas Moon (Warner). Apparently harmless and unoriginal, no more than an old-fashioned "western" elaborated with a theme song, technicolor and a comedian cast in a serious role as an amorous bandit, this picture is important for being a direct violation of the Code of Cinemorality proclaimed last week by Tsar Will Hays. One of the principal articles of the Hays code was directed against the cinematic practice of glorifying criminals. In Under a Texas Moon a scapegrace who steals the property of decent people, lies to women, makes love irresponsibly and carries a pistol, is shown succeeding in life and having a good time. Worse than that, he is made out a likeable fellow. Some of the moral noxiousness of Frank Fay's performance may be palliated for those who have seen him before by the knowledge that he is in private life a cabaret singer and master of ceremonies who must have picked up what he knows of the bad ways of the plains while appearing on the Palace circuit. A sheep in wolf's clothing, he sometimes retaliates for his discomfort by glossing his role with furtive mockery, quickly suppressed. Some of the photography is pretty and the theme song, "Under a Texas Moon," better than the average. Silliest shot: Fay eloping with Myrna Loy, when he might have had Armida or Raquel Torres.

Captain of the Guard (Universal). The fall of the French Empire is tucked into this scenario to give spice to the ardors and difficulties of 18th Century love. A little effort has been made and a good deal of money spent to present a moving picture in the manner of the historical stories that David Wark Griffith directed so successfully many years ago. But everything is stupidly done: the people are schoolbook figurines, the lovers absurd, and even the well-photographed scenes, such as the Paris mob singing the "Marseillaise," the carpenters working on the scaffold, the march to the palace, the fight with the palace guards, are spoiled by bad detail. The carpenters, for instance, have the enunciation of experienced Shakespearean actors. The marching mob, supposed to be recruited from the slums, all have the same kind of torches, as though their supplies for the attack on the palace had been issued by a circus property-room. Silliest shot: John Boles getting Laura La Plante out of the dungeon.

The Man Hunter. Critic Irene Thirer of the New York Daily News referred to this picture as a "barkie," which is one way of saying that its most startling sound effects are produced by a dog--famed Rin Tin Tin. He helps to apprehend a villain, the unscrupulous manager of a tropical rubber plantation (John Loder), and is thereby a great satisfaction to the comely heiress who, among other things, has been willed the plantation. In the course of the story Charles Delaney becomes variously but strongly attached to both girl and dog.

Some German soldier probably found the litter of puppies on a deserted Alsatian farm and took them along with him for luck. When luck went bad, he left them behind. The Allied troops getting into the captured sector found the puppies in a dugout, whimpering with hunger. They were pure-blooded Belgian police dogs with skinny ratlike bodies and long black noses. The litter was divided and one Lee Duncan, lieutenant in the U. S. aviation corps, got a handsome male and a young bitch. There was a story going around then about two lovers, Rin Tin Tin and Nanette, the only people left alive in a French town after it had been shelled. U. S. doughboys were giving their sweethearts images of these lucky lovers, little dolls made of worsted Duncan took the name for his dogs. The bitch died, but Rin Tin Tin reached California. Duncan taught him to climb a 17-ft. wall, to do countless tricks. When picture studios wanted a dog, they rented Rin Tin Tin.

Rin Tin Tin is about twelve years old. He has been supporting Duncan since 1923. He has two puppies by a bitch a friend gave Duncan before Rin Tin Tin became famous. Cynical commentators have suggested that Rin Tin Tin probably "owes everything to the little wife." He lives in a wire training camp adjacent to the fine house in Beverly Hills that has been built out of his earnings. He has never bitten anybody. When, in front of the camera, he springs at a villain, he somehow avoids scratching with his big teeth the throat which he clamps between his jaws with an appearance of ferocity. Despite his unfailing skill at apprehending the villain on the screen, Rin Tin Tin, asleep a few feet away, offered no resistance when robbers burgled Duncan's home last year. He will not take food from anyone but Duncan who talks to him as though he were an intelligent human being. Duncan says "Get mad," "Act Scared," "Pay no attention" in pantomime with full assurance of being obeyed. Rin Tin Tin has made 15 pictures. A few: While London Sleeps, Tracked in the Snow Country, The Million Dollar Collar.

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