The New Pictures

Babes on Broadway (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). Even in Hollywood, the custom among the males is to grow up first, and then get married. Against-the-grain Mickey Rooney, 21, got married last week to 19-year-old Hollywood Newcomer Ava Gardner. That adulthood is something he has yet to attain as an actor, Babes on Broadway makes uncomfortably plain. Miss Gardner, fresh from easygoing North Carolina, may have a maturing, decelerating effect on her breathless mate; in that case the future may be worth hanging around for.

Babes consumes so much celluloid at such a loud pace that it is one of the most exhausting pictures of this or any other year. Besides the strenuous theatrical Rooney calisthenics, Babes also has waspy Alexander Woollcott cooing about young folks and the theater; brigades of vigorous young Americans doing dance numbers and rushing about; English refugee children conversing with their parents by short wave. It also has a plot.

Mickey Rooney, who would rather be caught dead than underplaying, has his hands full when he encounters bright-eyed Judy Garland. He is one of a trio of hopeful hoofers billed as The Three Balls of Fire. She is a would-be singer. Their careers are joined when he offers to produce a show for the benefit of some settlement children who need a month in the country; they are jolted when his professedly philanthropic activities (the show is for his benefit, too) cease to remind her of Lincoln freeing the slaves.

From that point Miss Garland, now 19 and wise to her co-star's propensity for stealing scenes, neatly takes the picture away from him. Rooney cannot sing, but Judy Garland can, and proves it pleasantly with such sure-fire numbers as Waiting for the Robert E. Lee, Franklin D. Roosevelt Jones; a new tune called Hoe Down; and a misfit: Chin Up, Cheerio, Carry On.

Master Rooney, Metro's No. 1 asset, now 21 and draftable, is given enough rope to hang himself. He does three so-called impersonations. His Harry Lauder and George M. Cohan are scarcely distinguishable; his conception of Carmen Miranda is painful. Apparently there is nothing he cannot do, except behave himself.

Paris Calling (Universal) is wee, elfin Elizabeth (Escape Me Never!) Bergner's first Hollywood picture. Now 41, the onetime top actress of the German stage has been making movies in England for the last seven years. Despite Miss Bergner's talents, none of her pictures has greatly pleased U.S. cinemagoers.

Nor is Paris Calling likely to. A melodrama of espionage and counterespionage, its title is the password of a secret shortwave radio station, over which Miss Bergner sends information by piano for decoding in England. Miss Bergner plays second fiddle to a gadgety plot which seldom gives her a chance. When it does, she is artful and pleasing. But melodrama is no frame for her childlike, tragicomic quality.

CURRENT & CHOICE

H. M. Pulham Esq. (Robert Young, Hedy Lamarr, Ruth Hussey, Charles Coburn; TIME, Jan. 5).

How Green Was My Valley (Roddy McDowall, Donald Crisp, Maureen O'Hara, Walter Pidgeon; TIME, Nov. 24).

Dumbo (Dumbo, Timothy Q. Mouse, Jim Crow, Mrs. Jumbo; TIME, Oct. 27).

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