The New Pictures

His Greatest Gamble (RKO) is a picture to perplex the Legion of Decency. Scrupulously clean in the matter of major morals, it advertises such minor vices as breaking jail, roulette and spilling water on the table cloth. Philip Eden (Richard Dix), hero of His Greatest Gamble, is, he says, a "half-mad cavalier who lights his cigaret on the stars and throws the stars away." By way of corroboration. he kidnaps his 10-year-old daughter from his estranged wife (Erin O'Brien-Moore); whisks her along the coast of France on a 30-day inspection of gambling casinos; ties a discarded mistress in an armchair where she suffocates; goes to jail for murder; escapes after 13 years to rescue his daughter who has been convinced by her mother that she is a chronic invalid. It appears certain, when His Greatest Gamble ends, that Philip Eden will go back to jail and his daughter (Dorothy Wilson) will marry a bedraggled reporter (Bruce Cabot) who gives every sign of becoming as assiduously irresponsible as his father-in-law.

Richard Dix makes the whimsy talk in His Greatest Gamble seem less offensive than it really is. Making her cinema debut, Erin O'Brien-Moore may well be successful in Hollywood when subjected to the attentions of skilled makeup artists and costumers.

Annette Erin O'Brien-Moore was born in Los Angeles in 1906, studied at St. Joseph's Convent in Tucson, planned to be a sculptor. At 15, she made her first appearance on the Manhattan stage. That she has not appeared in cinema before is partly due to the fact that in 1929 she was selected to play the young daughter in Street Scene. After 800 performances in Manhattan and London, she met Sam Goldwyn to discuss playing in the cinema version. They became so interested in how the picture should be made that they forgot to sign a contract. In the cinema Street Scene, Sylvia Sidney got the Moore part.

Erin O'Brien-Moore's grandfather was part owner of the Galveston News and the Dallas News. Her brother is an associate professor of Latin & Greek at Yale. Her father was a newspaper reporter. When abroad, Erin O'Brien-Moore contemplated visiting his birthplace in Ireland, tossed a coin, went to Paris with friends instead. She owns no pets except a ten-year-old alley cat, dislikes all sports except swimming, admires Al Smith. She cried with dismay when she saw her cinema tests. Her next picture will be Dangerous Corner.

Grand Canary (Fox). In show business "Canary" means soprano, but this picture is not about a musicomedienne. Its hero is another Hollywood reliable, the downhearted doctor. Harvey Leith (Warner Baxter) has invented an extraordinary serum in his London laboratory. When he administers it too late, three patients die and he is discredited as a quack. Morbidly discouraged, he boards ship for distant ports. At sea he meets Lady Mary Fielding (Madge Evans), returning to her husband in the Canary Islands.

When Dr. Leith arrives at Santa Cruz, the natives are in the throes of a yellow fever epidemic. He settles at the home of a dilapidated marquesa, prepares to go to work. Lady Fielding comes to see him and falls ill immediately. Fortunately the Leith serum proves a panacea. It cures Lady Fielding first, then the natives. Dr. Leith returns to London a hero. In the original version of the picture Dr. Leith receives a telegram from Lady Fielding saying she will leave her husband and join him. A more moral ending, substituted after its release last week, shows Dr. Leith receiving a wire from Lady Fielding which says merely, "I am happy for you."

A fair example of the microbe movie, Grand Canary, adapted from A. J. Cronin's best seller, is small, erratic, commonplace. Good shot: Marjorie Rambeau as the proprietor of a Santa Cruz bad-house, singing a cockney song to a superannuated Irish soldier of fortune.

Here Comes the Navy (Warner) puts James Cagney into a sailor suit aboard the U. S. S. Arizona where, as a rebellious, bantam egomaniac, he comports himself exactly as he has done before as a journalist, a taxidriver, a gambler, an iron-puddler, a race-track tout, a bellhop. The difference in plot between Here Comes the Navy and earlier Cagney pictures is a narrative borrowed from the Edmund Lowe-&-Victor McLaglen pictures: a constant squabble with a petty officer (Pat O'Brien) who fights Chesty O'Connor (Cagney) at a dance hall, steals his girl, bullies him on shipboard, has him disciplined for being absent without leave, and finally objects to Chesty's romance with his sister.

Two years ago, near San Diego, two members of the U. S. S. Akron's ground crew were killed when they clung to the dirigible's ground ropes as the craft ascended. This gruesome incident is included in the happy ending of Here Comes the Navy. Chesty, transferred to the lighter-than-air service, arrives at Sunnyvale aboard the Macon. The man who holds on to the rope too long is the petty officer. Just as he is about to drop off Chesty rescues him with a parachute, gets promoted to the rank of chief boatswain.

Rapid and reasonably authentic, Here Comes the Navy is a satisfactory addition to a series of cinema cartoons which, because their color and mood are indigenous and timely, may be more interesting than most current cinemas 20 years from now. Good shot: Chesty receiving a medal for valor, then contemptuously pinning it on his friend Droopy (Frank McHugh).

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