The New Pictures

The Old-Fashioned Way (Paramount). Unlike Harpo Marx, William Claude Dukinfield (W. C. Fields) does not exhibit demented glee. His figure and his nose are as grotesque as those of James Durante, but he does not exploit them vivaciously. He is a character of solemn and futile dignity, presenting a set of absurd and foolish tricks which he has been performing for 30 years in vaudeville and revues. Although he never seems to suspect that he is funny, he is fast becoming a comedian as valuable to the talkies as Charles Chaplin was to the silent cinema ten years ago.

The most notable revival in The O1d-Fashioned Way is the cigar-box balancing which Fields perfected in the early 1900's while performing twelve times a day in kerosene-lit vaudeville houses. He also manages to fall through a bass drum, sit on a knitting needle, utter an oldtime slogan: "It ain't a fit night out for man nor beast." A false curl falls from a lady's head which he is stroking; he attaches it to his upper lip, twists the ends. When a small urchin (Baby Le Roy) annoys him, Fields fondles him until the mother leaves the room. Then he kicks him on the bottom.

The story of The Old-Fashioned Way deals with a stumbling stock company of which Fields is the befuddled impresario. It includes only one funny sequence in which Fields is not the centre of attention: the efforts of a superannuated amateur diva (Jan Duggan) to render a ballad called "When We Gathered the Shells on the Sea Shore."

Whom the Gods Destroy (Columbia). When Producer John Forrester (Walter Connolly) finds himself off the coast of Newfoundland on the deck of a sinking ocean liner, he removes his lifebelt and gives it to another passenger. A moment later, acting on a frantic impulse, he undoes his heroism by wrapping himself in a lady's coat, hopping into a lifeboat which lands him safely in a fishing village. When he gets back to New York several months later, John Forrester finds himself mourned as a dead hero. He realizes that if he makes it known that he is still alive, he will be disgraced.

Cinema characters required by circumstances to lead backdoor lives have one thing in common: an only child. John Forrester's is a son named Jack who, when he grows up to be a young man (Robert Young) hopes to be a theatre impresario like his father. Old John Forrester, now a backstage worker in a puppet show, goes to the first night of his son's first play, sees it fail. Later in the evening, disguised in whiskers, he visits young Forrester in his office, encourages him to try again. After the gala premiere of Jack Forrester's second play there arrives the inevitable climax -- a recognition scene between old John Forrester and his wife (Doris Kenyon). They fall into each other's arms. Shamed but happy, old Forrester makes her see the necessity of concealing his identity from their son.

Written by hulking, mild-mannered Albert Payson Terhune, whose dog stories have been so successful that he has never had much chance to write anything else, Whom the Gods Destroy is ideal cinema material: sad, intelligent, dramatic and improving. Handsomely photographed and directed by Walter Lang in such a way as to extract the last tear from every situation, its importance as a picture is that it may launch Walter Connolly as a U. S. Emil Jannings.

Walter Connolly's first venture into cinema (The Soldier's Oath, with William Farnum, in 1917) satisfied him so little that he refused to make another picture for 15 years. Columbia offered him a contract which permits him to act in plays when he chooses. Since 1932 he has appeared in 13 pictures, established himself as one of the three or four actors of his generation capable of carrying a production. He was born in 1888 in Cincinnati where his father was head of the Western Union relay office. After studying at St. Xavier College and the University of Dublin, Walter Connolly made his professional debut in 1909. Just after the War, he married Actress Nedda Harrigan. Fond of horse races, Walter Connolly wanted to be a jockey until he found it interfered with his diet. He weighs 190 lb. stands 5 ft. 9 in. Hollywood has not changed his habit of breakfasting at noon. A better comedian on stage than off, Connolly once amused himself, while ailing in a Chicago hospital, by calling up all the Shelleys in the telephone directory, asking each if Percy was at home. In Hollywood the work of photographers, soundmen and set mechanics interests him so much that he finds it hard to keep his mind on acting. His next picture will be Broadway Belle.

The Man With Two Faces (First National) is an experiment in adaptation. The play from which it was derived, The Dark Tower, by George S. Kaufman and Alexander Woollcott, dealt in terms of mystery melodrama with its hero a celebrated character actor who turned his technique to practical advantage by putting on a disguise and murdering an obnoxious brother-in-law. A program note requested audiences not to reveal the murderer's identity. The cinema treatment by Tom Reed and Niven Busch reveals the murderer's identity in the title and hammers it home throughout the narrative.

As Damon Wells, Edward G. Robinson is up to his usual tricks, snarling, drawling and cocking a cigar at persons he dislikes. As Chautard, the character whom Wells invents to poison his brother-in-law, Robinson wears shoes with heels built up six inches, false eyebrows and upholstered braces, gives a proper note of artful hamming. A cruel and callous hypnotist, with effeminate manners, sadistic impulses and the instincts of a gigolo, the brother-in-law (Louis Calhern) makes his pretty wife (Mary Astor) go into a trance and obey his dismal orders. He exhibits loyalty only to his two white mice. When a servant sniffs at them, remarks: "I'd like to know when the three of you are leaving," he gives her a calm warning: "If you hurt these mice I shall have the extreme pleasure of knocking you down and kicking your brains out."

Return of the Terror (First National) is adapted from a mystery story by the late Edgar Wallace. Dr. Redmayne (John Halliday), a psychiatrist, is railroaded to a State insane asylum by his associates. One howling night he escapes, returns to his own sanatorium. Present for various reasons are three crooks, a lawyer, a newspaper man and five demented inmates. Before dawn two murders and two assaults are committed. Next day a third murder exposes the busy assassin.

Like most mystery pictures, Return of the Terror suffers from the introduction of minor bafflements which are not integral to the plot. A neatly-turned solution makes it a better-than-average chiller. Good atmosphere: the storm which rages through half the picture.

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