Operatic Opener

When a Hollywood producer spends a fortune making something which he considers a masterpiece, his next step is to spend another fortune advertising his achievement.

When he finished making One Night of Love last spring, Columbia's President Harry Cohn decided that this musical picture starring Grace Moore was entirely too fine to waste on summer audiences, that it would be put aside as the company's first release for the new season.

Fortnight ago, the build-up for One Night of Love began. In Manhattan journals a "teaser" campaign announced the coming of a "new picture of importance" but made no mention of it by name. Cinemaddicts were finally informed that "an evening for the gods" awaited them at the Radio City Music Hall.

Last week the ballyhoo really broke loose. Producer Cohn's advertising department splashed half-pages in Manhattan newssheets, called One Night of Love "the most glorious musical romance of all time." Eddie Cantor, Mary Pickford, Gloria Swanson, Ruth Chatterton, Clark Gable and Norma Shearer publicly agreed. In Chattanooga, Tenn., Miss Moore's hometown, Mayor Edward Davis Bass proclaimed a "Grace Moore Week." Miss Moore's father and mother accepted invitations to a gala southern premiere. Finally, in Manhattan, popular commotion leached a climax of which not even Producer Cohn should have dared to dream. After the opening at the Music Hall, Conde Nast gave a party for Grace Moore.

In the roaring 1920's, the parties of the publisher of Vogue, Vanity Fair, House & Garden were the brightest and smartest of every social season. Then Depression whittled them down to next to nothing. But for Mr. Nast the Depression is now over and last week's function was meant to prove it. Two hundred guests were invited to the Nast Park Avenue penthouse and hundreds more came anyway to dance to Leo Reisman's orchestra, to drink champagne on the terrace, to look and to be looked at. On hand were Vincent Astor and Karl K. Kitchen, the Alexander Hamiltons and the Grantland Rices, Paul Block and Mrs. Marshall Field, Charles E. Mitchell and Raymond Moley, Mrs. Dodge Sloane and the Governor of the Bahamas, the Irving Berlins and the Harrison Williamses, Renee Baruch and Mary Pickford, Joseph E. Widener and Mrs. William Randolph Hearst, the Averell Harrimans and the Walter Chryslers-- not to mention two princes, a duke, a count & countess, two barons and a baroness.

Next day, the New York Times made it clear that the cinema had at last acquired the cachet which up to now has belonged solely to grand opera by comparing the first mezzanine ($1.65) section of the Music Hall, where Mr. Nast's guests occupied the first two rows, to the Golden Horseshoe of the Metropolitan.

Well aware that such a social to-do is just as likely to accompany a poor picture as a good one, critics were quite prepared to find One Night of Love one more tedious backstage romance with postcard scenery and chop-suey music. Instead they found it altogether worthy of the excitement created over it and its star. It was an intelligent, handsome and high- spirited production which presented cinemaddicts with a better chance than they have ever had before to hear a first-rate performance by a first-rate grand opera diva.

When One Night of Love begins Mary Barrett (Grace Moore) is an opera student singing in a radio contest. When she loses the contest she goes to Milan to study. After she has found excuses for singing an aria from La Traviata and joining in a sextet from Lucia, she takes a job in an Osteria. Monteverdi. (Tullio Carminati), the greatest teacher in all Italy, dines there one evening, hears her sing "Ciribiribin." He proposes to train her for opera on condition that she will not fall in love with him.

Touring about Europe with Monteverdi, Mary Barrett finds opportunities to sing "Last Rose of Summer." She makes her debut in Carmen, of which One Night of Love includes one good episode intact. Seasoned cinemaddicts need not fear that Mary Barrett and Monteverdi will live up to their agreement. By the time she makes her debut, they are in love. An amiable young American (Lyle Talbot) and a temperamental onetime pupil (Mona Barrie) interfere with the romance to the extent of causing Mary Barrett to desert Monteverdi, accept an offer from the Metropolitan. The finale of the picture shows her Metropolitan debut in Madame Butterfly metamorphosed from potential failure to triumph when she spies Monteverdi grimacing in the prompter's box.

One Night of Love contains better voice recording than any previous musical cinema. To capture Grace Moore's intonations Columbia used a new method which permitted greater latitude and volume. Gracefully and gayly written by Dorothy Speare and Charles Beahan, its story is familiar but not banal. The whole cast acts well. Nonetheless, the fact that One Night of Love comes as close as any picture can to living up to its billing is due mainly to Grace Moore. Slim, good-humored and in splendid voice, she makes One Night of Love the first picture with which the cinema can seriously challenge opera. Good shot: Mary Barrett lying on her back, trying to lift six volumes piled on her stomach when Monteverdi tells her to raise her diaphragm.

In Jellico. Tenn., where her parents were good solid citizens, Grace Moore sang in the church choir. But she also performed tricks like untying all the horses and mules on Alain Street when their owners were doing their Saturday night shopping. When in 1928 she made her Metropolitan debut after five years in musicomedy, she received headlines and ovations but critics were not impressed. Before One Night of Love, she had made two cinemas, A Lady's Morals and New Moon. She owns a house in Paris, a villa at Cannes where she bottles her own wine. Three years ago she married a Spanish cinemactor named Valentin Parera. Before going to Hollywood, she reduced from 152 to 135 lb.

She Loves Me Not (Paramount) presents an edifying contrast to the play from which it was adapted. Both tell the same story--that of the dancer who, to avoid the unpleasant consequences of having witnessed a murder in the night club where she works, runs away, finds sanctuary in a Princeton dormitory, disrupts the campus before being removed to Hollywood by a cinema company. The play used the plot as a framework for light-hearted satire at the expense of Communism, the cinema, higher education and the Press. The cinema uses it as framework for pure farce interspersed with songs by Bing Crosby, as one of the authors of a Triangle Club show, and Kitty Carlisle, as the dean's daughter. Miriam Hopkins squeaks and wriggles pleasantly through her performance as the dancer.

Less eccentric than its original. She Loves Me Not is a creditable adaptation, scatterbrained, high-geared and funny. Best songs: "Love in Bloom," "Straight from the Shoulder," "I'm Hummin'." Worst shot: the steps of Nassau Hall, with real Princeton seniors waving their hats.

There's Always Tomorrow (Universal) is a sad little glimpse of the White family, battling a picayune crisis. Mother White (Lois Wilson) is so devoted to her children that she forgets about Father White (Frank Morgan) except when the furnace gets too low. When the children give a party he has to sit out on the porch. He is cooling his heels there one evening when Alice Vaile (Binnie Barnes), his onetime secretary, finds him. Presently, Father White and Alice Vaile are involved in an innocuous intrigue. On Thursday nights, he tells Mother White that he is going to the Lodge but goes instead to Alice Vaile's. When the White children discover this state of affairs, they feel demoralized. The eldest considers breaking his engagement. The others beg him not to tell their mother. The whole situation is cleared up finally when Alice Vaile decides to go away. In the future it appears that Father White may get better treatment in his home.

When it attempts to purvey good advice, the cinema is often at its worst. There's Always Tomorrow is sanctimoniously stupid. Not even Frank Morgan's smooth characterization can make Father White seem anything but a feeble illustration borrowed from a domestic-advice column. The rest of the cast of There's Always Tomorrow are unpleasant nonentities, engaged in difficulties as boring as they are unreal. Worst shot: young Henry White (Alan Hale) arguing with himself.

British Agent (First National) shows a pair of international agents up to their customary tricks, of spying on each other while they fall in love. Stephen Locke (Leslie Howard) goes to Moscow to prevent Russia from signing a separate peace with Germany. Elena (Kay Francis) is Lenin's secretary, detailed to steal from Stephen the papers that will justify his execution. That no execution occurs will surprise few cinemaddicts.

Adapted from incidents in Robert Hamilton Bruce Lockhart's autobiography. British Agent is lifted a notch above the level of run-of-the-mill spy pictures by the eloquent dialog by Laird Doyle, by expert performances by Howard and Francis. Good shot: a firing squad dealing with one of Locke's confreres.

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