The New Pictures

The Women (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) contains no less than 135 of them, of all ages, shapes, sizes and stages of neurotic disintegration, and the shadow of one man. The man is Stephen Haines. The most important women are his wife Mary (Norma Shearer), her cattish friend Sylvia Fowler (Rosalind Russell), who makes sure that Mary knows about Stephen's carrying on with a perfume salesgirl, and the girl, Crystal Allen (Joan Crawford). Mary's consequent trip to Reno introduces her to many another specimen of her sex, notably a fat U. S. countess (Mary Boland) with a crush on a cowboy named Buck, and Sylvia Fowler's own marital Nemesis, gay but tenacious Show-girl Miriam Aarons (Paulette Goddard). The drama of The Women is the effort of a good woman to adjust herself to a social pattern in which she is as much at a disadvantage as a Pekingese out foraging with a pack of Siberian wolves. Mary does succeed in keeping her happiness, but not until she too has done a little clawing for it.

Although M. G. M. added such embellishments as a misplaced fashion show to the Clare Boothe play that ran 19 months on Broadway in 1936-38,* The Women, like its original, is a mordant, mature description of the social decay of one corner of the U. S. middle classes. Prevented by the nature of the cast from publicizing the picture with a studio romance, M. G. M. pressagents did not discourage the assumption of fan writers that its trio of temperamental stars were engaged in a studio feud. This device worked well recently for Warners', when George Raft and James Cagney were inaccurately rumored to be at each others throats while making Each Dawn I Die, and similar apocryphal stories were circulated about Bette Davis and Miriam Hopkins during production of The Old Maid. Prima Donna Shearer, for purely professional reasons, saw to it that she was billed above rival Prima Donna Crawford, stipulated that her name should be advertised in type half as large as the title and twice as large as that of Lesser Luminary Russell. But if this precaution stirred any bad blood, fat, high-voiced Director George Cukor, an understanding specialist in the ways of feminine stars, allowed none to flow on the set.

Nurse Edith Cavell (Imperadio-RKO), the austere-faced, 50-year-old Englishwoman who was executed by a German firing squad in Brussels in 1915 for aiding the escape of fugitives from German prison camps, has appeared as the heroine of three cinemas. The first, and most bravura, version was made in the U. S. in 1918, year before Nurse Cavell was reinterred by the British in Norwich Cathedral and Germany took the villain's rap at Versailles. In 1928 British Producer Herbert Wilcox presented in Dawn a more objective edition in keeping with the forgive-&-forget spirit of Locarno. The third, made in Hollywood this year by Producer Wilcox and his brightest star, Anna Neagle (Victoria the Great, Sixty Glorious Years), was apparently designed as the appeasement or Munich, version. Released last week, it seemed likely, by grace of the times and its air of Chamberlainish understatement, to become one of the most devastating and effective propaganda pictures ever made. Actress Neagle's Nurse Cavell is much as history made her, a lonely Englishwoman running a nursing home in Brussels when the German war machine spreads over Belgium. When the grandson of her friend Mme Rappard (May Robson) escapes from the Germans and with her help gets away to The Netherlands, she thinks her duty lies with others like him. With the help of Mme Rappard, the resourceful Countess Mavon (Edna May Oliver) and a bargeman's wife (Zasu Pitts), she organizes a large-scale underground railway whose humanitarian objectives are naturally misunderstood by the equally dutiful German military authorities. She spirits 200 captives out of the war zone before the intelligence service catches up with her.

In response to an advertisement by Producer Wilcox for an expert on the decor of Brussels in 1915, one turned up, established his competence by proving that he was the shoemaker who forged credentials for Nurse Cavell and her friends. He not only did the decor, but re-enacted his old role. Retired U. S. Ambassador to Brussels Hugh Gibson, who was Secretary of the Legation in Brussels in 1915, allowed Producer Wilcox to show him vainly pleading for Edith Cavell with the German authorities on behalf of his ailing chief, Minister Brand Whitlock. In one instance Producer Wilcox rejected history as too melodramatic. One member of the Cavell firing squad, a private named Rammler, refused to carry out his command, followed Nurse Cavell before his comrades' guns. In the picture Edith Cavell dies alone.

CURRENT & CHOICE

Stanley and Livingstone (Spencer Tracy, Sir Cedric Hardwicke; TIME, Aug.14).

Four Feathers (John Clements, Ralph Richardson, C. Aubrey Smith; TIME, Aug. 21).

The Wizard of Oz (Judy Garland, Ray Bolger, Jack Haley, Bert Lahr; TIME, Aug. 21).

The Star Maker (Bing Crosby, Louise Campbell, Ned Sparks; TIME, Sept. 4).

* Last week The Women was going great guns in London when the great guns began to shoot.

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