The New Pictures

Twenty Million Sweethearts (First National). Like We're Not Dressing (see below), this is a casual musicomedy in which there are no chorus girls and most of the songs are allotted to one young man. It makes tentative gestures at satirizing Radio, as when ''Uncle Pete" (Allen Jenkins) elaborately professes to detest children, and a Jewish soap manufacturer (Joseph Cawthorne ) lets his wife, niece and cousins run his programs. Twenty Million Sweet lie arts mostly concerns a fatuous singing waiter (Dick Powell) who becomes a celebrated crooner. Discovered singing "The Man on the Flying Trapeze'' by a brash, noisy scout (Pat O'Brien), the waiter fails dismally at his audition, later gets another chance when aided by a soap-hour singer (Ginger Rogers). The two love but are separated by O'Brien who does not wish to alienate Powell's 20,000,000 admirers. When Ginger Rogers once more helps Powell, the sponsors and radio folk are so impressed by their singing together that they are glad to hire them as a duet. Good song: ''I'll String Along With You." Good shot: Powell beholding Ginger Rogers for the first time as she rehearses in a glass booth.

Pert, red-haired Ginger Rogers (Virginia McMath ), 23, has been dancing nimbly and singing huskily since she won a Charleston contest in Texas at 16. In vaudeville she called herself "The Original John Held Jr. Girl" although she had never met or posed for that artist. Playing on Broadway in Top Speed and Girl Crazy, she got a cinema contract because Hollywood liked the way she kept repeating "Cigaret me, big boy!" in Young Man of Manhattan. She plays expert ping-pong, likes to speak pig-Latin, dislikes exhibiting her feet. We're Not Dressing (Paramount). This picture may suggest tremendous new possibilities to producers. Stranded on a desert isle, an heiress (Carole Lombard) and a sailor (Bing Crosby) give credit where due by remarking that their situation resembles that outlined in The Admirable Crichton. This is an exaggeration, for Sir James Matthew Barrie did not trouble to put a trained bear, a tame crooner, Burns & Allen and two mercenary Georgian princelings into his play. In We're Not Dressing Miss Lombard's yacht is wrecked when her drunken uncle (Leon Errol) steers it on a reef. When the passengers reach land, Crooner Crosby masters the situation by cooking clams, building thatched huts and at odd moments intoning such songs as "Love Thy Neighbor." All the others, including the Georgians who wish to marry the heiress, are incompetent and insolent.

Meantime on another part of the island. George Burns is hunting flora and fauna and Grace Allen is hindering and annoying him in her deplorably silly manner. Miss Allen constructs a Moose Trap (moose = two mice), goes piggyback riding on the bear, encounters Miss Lombard and lends her clothing and tools. When rescue ships arrive for the castaways. Miss Allen plays an accordion, weeps sentimentally because its pleats pinch her stomach. Interspersed liberally with shots of Crooner Crosby's blank, adenoidal face, We're Not Dressing is fair entertainment, easygoing, incredible and sanitary. Finishing School (RKO-Radio) is a better U. S. imitation of Maedchen in Uniform than was Eight Girls in a Boat. Its treatment of the love and seduction of a schoolgirl (Frances Dee) differs by having her seducer and eventual husband an honest hospital interne (Bruce Cabot) instead of a vacillating chemistry student: her headmistress (Beulah Bondi) a gelid snob instead of a sympathetic friend. Finishing School implies that institutions like Crockett Hall, where tuition costs $6,000, do not mind the misconduct of their young charges so long as it is undertaken discreetly with eligible young men. Frances Dee errs by trying to bring her interne, who is a hotel waiter by night, to a Sunday tea at the school. Kept in school during holidays, she meets him Christmas Eve in the boathouse. After that her plight is suggested when the headmistress announces she must be examined by the school doctor. Finishing School is made valid and sincere by good performances including an honest one by Frances Dee and a flibbertigibbet one by Billie Burke as her mother. Good shot: Frances Dee pondering suicide in the classroom when a schoolmistress explains why Anna Karenina was right in taking her life.

The Witching Hour (Paramount). Generation ago when hypnotism and psychiatry were new to the stage, this well-made play by Augustus Thomas was a Broadway hit. As a picture it is a museum piece, stuffed with sawdust and costumed in the period. Jack Brookfield (John Haliday), proprietor of a Kentucky gambling house, is hypnotic, adept at reading thoughts and feeling premonitions. One night he gets rid of his guests just before a raid, has an altercation with a crooked politician. Thinking murderous thoughts, Brookfield talks with his son-in-law-to-be who has a phobia for cat's-eye stones. Hypnotically the gambler seeks to rid the younger man of his obsession. Next morning without being aware of it, the youth kills the politician. It takes the services of a famed old attorney (Sir Guy Standing), a long courtroom scene and a demonstration of hypnosis to wind up the story. Silly shot: the old lawyer being moved to take the case by the apparition of an old sweetheart, the murderer's grandmother.

Hitler's Reign of Terror (Jewel Productions Inc.) is Cornelius Vanderbilt Jr.'s first cinema venture, a synthesis of some interviews he obtained and some pictures his cameramen took in Germany and Austria last year. When this picture opened in Chicago last fortnight. German Ambassador Hans Luther lodged a protest through the German Consul General. Mayor Edward J. Kelly had the theatre's permit rescinded, only to change his mind and let it reopen. Last week Hitler's Reign of Terror opened in Manhattan, although the New York State censors had twice demurred against licensing it. Such tender solicitude for the feelings of the Third Reich perplexed many an observer. A cut-&-paste job done mostly in the U. S.. Hitler's Reign of Terror is a mild, slipshod tract that will disappoint many an anti-Nazi who hopes to behold bloodcurdling atrocities. Interspersed with newsreel sequences, stills, shots of newspaper headlines and even an engraving of Napoleon, it shows "Neely" Vanderbilt poking about in Hitlerland, hovering on the edge of crowds, losing his passport, having some films confiscated by Nazis and sitting in his suite in Berlin's swank Hotel Adlon admiring his signed photograph of President Roosevelt. While Mr. Vanderbilt narrates in a high, quavering voice, he is cross-examined by solemn Radio Newsman Edwin C. Hill. Mr. Vanderbilt's prize interviews are "reproduced" with actors dressed up as ex-Kaiser Wilhelm. the Crown Prince, Prince Louis Ferdinand and a fierce, funny little Hitler with a Chaplin mustache.

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