The New Pictures

They Gave Him A Gun (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). "I live for my country and work for it . . .'' says Jimmy (Franchot Tone) in this picture, "but when they order me to travel 3.000 miles to be a butcher, I quit." This is just after he has fainted from disgust during a 1917 bayonet drill and is being revived by his buddy, Fred (Spencer Tracy). At the front, equipped with a high-powered rifle and good eyesight, Jimmy's attitude changes. When luck puts him in a church steeple with a perfect chance to pick off five members of a German machine-gun nest, he murmurs, "What a dish!'' and bowls them over like clay ducks in a shooting gallery.

Message of They Gave Him A Gun, adapted from William Joyce Cowan's novel, is that war breeds gangsters. This not particularly startling thesis is elaborately worked out in connection with Rose Duffy (Gladys George), the hospital nurse who falls in love with Fred but marries Jimmy out of sympathy. When Fred encounters the young couple in the U. S. after the Armistice. Jimmy is running a protective association that gives him ample opportunity to keep up his target practice. Fred tells Rose and Rose tells the police. By this time, Jimmy's slightly Freudian affinity for guns has been so thoroughly established that it is no great surprise when he shoots his way out of jail to get back to Rose; nor when, finding Rose and Fred together, he conquers his cowardice long enough to face the police without benefit of firearms.

As a preachment against war, They Gave Him A Gun would be more persuasive if it did not permit the impression that experience in the trenches may have improved Fred about as much as it weakened Jimmy. As melodrama, it would be more effective if Director W. S. Van Dyke had avoided more of the cliches that tend to attach themselves to all pictures involving 1) soldiers, 2) gangsters, 3) emotional triangles. To balance its defects, They Gave Him A Gun, no masterpiece but a fast-moving, adult screen play, has the ad vantage of highly proficient performances by its three principals, notably Gladys George in her first major role since Valiant Is the Word for Carrie. Good shot: Jimmy's version of the feat that got him the Croix de Guerre.

Behind the Headlines (RKO). Reporters who had to compete with Newsflash Broadcaster Eddy Haines (Lee Tracy) agreed that if they threw him out of the window he would scoop them by broadcasting the news all the way to the ground. Mary Bradley (Diana Gibson), the Star's sobsister, had been engaged to him until he sent her to pick out a ring while he beat her to the story of a round-the-world flight. In her opinion he was such an "utter cockroach" that she hired thugs to bar him from a dance hall fire, news of which he wished to broadcast from his pack-set. Mary stole the pack-set, found it handy after she was kidnapped by a gang of thugs occupied in stealing a Federal gold shipment, armored car and all. It was Eddy Haines who, riding in a blimp over the Kentucky mountains, oriented her position on his receiving set, guiding G-Men to the rescue none too soon.

In spite of such improbabilities as hoodlums using toy automobiles to rehearse a holdup, Behind the Headlines is an unusually exciting program melodrama. To Lee Tracy addicts it marks one more, perhaps a permanent "comeback" of their favorite, who is now alleged to have forsworn the haywire ways which brought him into disrepute with Hollywood producers. Diana Gibson looks like an outdoor version of Marion Nixon and acts with a promising swing. Best shots: Tracy defeating his hecklers by getting into the burning dance hall through the skylight; the Potter gang capturing the gold shipment by overcoming the staff of the armored car with gas released from an attacking automobile, an episode that will be censorable in several States since it suggests how to commit a crime.

Forever Yours (Grand National). When Beniamino Gigli (pronounced zhee-lyee) was a choirboy in Recanati, Italy 40 years ago, he was called "Il Passero Solitario" (the solitary sparrow). When Enrico Caruso died in 1921 and Gigli inherited his roles at the Metropolitan Opera, he was called "the world's greatest tenor." Eleven years later when Gigli refused to take a 10% salary cut to help the staggering Metropolitan keep going, he was called names far less flattering, which so ''diminished" his "dignity as a man and as an artist'' that he went back to Europe in a huff. Said he: "If the American people will express the wish to have me here again, I'll gladly return and sing with all my soul." For five years Sparrow Gigli warbled in Continental concerts, grew a paunch in Munich beer halls, dabbled in German cinemas. Then Hollywood finally called him again to the U. S. Last week, much fatter than in his Metropolitan heyday and resembling both New York's Mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia and Chicago's Scarface Al Capone, he made his U. S. cinema debut in Forever Yours, by all odds the best operatic picture of the year.

Dreamy-eyed from hearing the great Enzo Curti (Gigli) sing on the radio, Helen Carlton (Joan Gardner) has a shipboard romance with First Officer Hugh Anderson (Ivan Brandt) on the way to the U. S. Believing malicious gossip, she jilts Officer Anderson on arrival, rebounds into the arms of Tenor Curti, whom she meets after finding his motherless son (Richard Gofe) in the hotel corridor. Married, they go off on a world tour which gives opportunity for a sound montage of excerpts from nine of the great operas. In London comes the inevitable second encounter with First Officer Anderson.

This unoriginal story has the triple virtues of constant great singing, excellent performance by a cast of comparative unknowns and superb photography by Hans Schneeberger (White Hell of Pitz Palu). Tenor Gigli's complete lack of the customary brand of Hollywood pulchritude is no loss. The compassionate dignity of his acting plus the honey of his voice should restore him to his oldtime U. S. popularity.

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