The New Pictures

Invitation to Happiness (Paramount). Prize fighters are not numerous, but the recurrent movies about the marital problems of prize fighters who marry above them have attained national significance. Most piquant of the recent lot, Invitation to Happiness bridges the social gap in a one-reel leap, thenceforth takes up where most palooka-heiress movies leave off, to see what may happen to such an alliance in, say, ten years.

This heiress, Irene Dunne, is an escapist from that "small circle that lives and dies within the circle." The prize fighter, Fred MacMurray, is different from most cine-maulers. What keeps him punching is a firm notion that falling short of the championship in any endeavor is the equivalent of a complete and final washout. For ten years of marriage he is a father who comes home now & then in the infrequent intervals of his long, confident barnstorming career in pursuit of the champion. By the time his hard-boiled-ego philosophy takes the count in a riproaring, ten-round climax (the film's only fight scene), he has squandered his wife's regard, has never won his son's. In line with proved cinema practice, however, mother and son rally around after pop has had his ears pinned back, seem resigned to living happily with him ever after.

Invitation to Happiness, by the six-year-old writer-director combination of Claude Binyon and Wesley Ruggles, is not exactly up Cinemactress Dunne's gay alley, but it is a setup for headstrong Cinemactor MacMurray, a field day for Character Actors William Collier Sr. and Charles Ruggles, Wesley's brother.

The Sun Never Sets (Universal). A year ago his grateful country awarded the Order of the British Empire to shaggy, 75-year-old Britannic Cinemactor C. Aubrey Smith, and why not? His gruff charm, his unwavering personification of the stiff upper lip that always dresses for dinner, especially among savages, has made him an effective one-man propaganda bureau for the British virtues. The Sun Never Sets is another reminder that, as long as C. Aubrey Smith, O. B. E., remains above the horizon, the Union Jack will continue to fly at full staff over Hollywood. His main service in this cinema is to hike young John Randolph (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) out of a cankerous apathy toward the imperial sun ("Let it set. It's about time it did") and into the Colonial service with his brother Clive (Basil Rathbone).

Once the Randolphs are off to the Gold Coast with the proper blessing, Cinemactor Smith retires to rest up for the next imperial command, leaving the script to its own Sunday-supplement involvements. Operating on the Gold Coast is a scientific expedition with a German accent, run by a retired munitions magnate named Zurof. Zurof's outfit is stealthily engaged in cornering mines of war materials. Also operating somewhere in the neighborhood is a warmongering Mystery Radio, spewing anti-British propaganda and urging sabotage on all outposts of the Empire.

Only slightly more agonizing than young Mr. Fairbanks' throes in putting this subversive two & two together is the sight of middle-aged Mr. Rathbone, as a sort of Imperial Rover Boy, lashing about the jungle in bush jacket and shorts, caught barekneed between Love & Duty.

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