The New Pictures

Brigham Young--Frontiersman (20th Century-Fox) continues the biographical meanderings of Plutarchian Producer Darryl Francis Zanuck with a two-hour treatise on the two most critical years in the history of the Mormon Church. Beginning with a cruelly realistic, play-by-play account of the persecution of the Latter-Day Saints in Illinois, Producer Zanuck moves his Mormons across the western plains through a succession of bouts with cold and starvation; plants them by the Great Salt Lake for an arduous, hungry winter, a pitched battle with crickets, a final miraculous victory assisted by a flock of sea gulls which arrives in the nick of time.

No welcher when it comes to touching tender spots, Zanuck tempted Mormon wrath by showing Brigham with four of his 27 wives. For publicity purposes the studio released several still pictures showing Young surrounded by a dozen Hollywood beauties representing his marital score at the date of the picture's action. Most conspicuous in the film is Mary Ann (Mary Astor), while frequently present is shapely, silent Clara (Jean Rogers). The two others lurk obscurely in the background.

Instead of casting a familiar Hollywood face in the role of Young (Spencer Tracy was considered, then rejected because of his frequent appearances as a Catholic priest), Zanuck "discovered" Dean Jagger, an able veteran of the Broadway stage, whose cinema appearances have been sporadic and inconspicuous. Jagger brings to his cumbersome, lengthy part such convincing dignity as to relegate to comparative minority the conventional romantic activity of Tyrone Power and Linda Darnell, two harassed lovers who string along on the westward trek.

Producer Zanuck's technical adviser was 80-year-old Mormon George D. Pyper, a former friend of Young, who watched from the sidelines during production. When the 60,000 fans--mostly Mormons--who jammed Salt Lake City for the premiere last month raised no cry of protest over Mormon mistreatment, Fox observers knew Adviser Pyper's salary had been well spent.

City for Conquest (Warner). With the help of Thornton Wilder, Hollywood gratefully learned a new way to spin a yarn. In Our Town, cinematized last spring, wise-eyed Frank Craven appeared on the screen as a rustic sage drawling philosophic comments on the passing events.

City for Conquest, like We Who Are Young (TIME, Sept. 30), borrows this technique to point up the clamoring struggle for existence which supposedly typifies Manhattan. This time Philosopher Craven wears a beard and the shaggy rags of a stumblebum, wanders in and out of the lives of the characters, seeing all, knowing all, interpreting all.

Frank Craven knows the urchins around the corner of Forsyth and Delancey Streets in Manhattan's lower East Side. He watches one of them grow into a scrappy little pug (James Cagney) who almost wins the world's championship, another become a sultry, sirenic dancer (Ann Sheridan), another a sneering gangster named Googi (Elia Kazan),still another a willowy, clean-cut composer (Arthur Kennedy).

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