The New Pictures

The Mudlark (20th Century-Fox), based on Theodore Bonnet's 1949 bestseller, embroiders the legend of the slum waif whose naive devotion to the Crown coaxed Queen Victoria out of a 15-year solitude and awakened Parliament to its social responsibilities. Produced in England by U.S. moviemakers, the picture drew some British sniping, even before the cameras turned, for its casting of Irene Dunne as the Queen. The sniping was resumed when the film was picked as Britain's Command Performance movie in November.

U.S. moviegoers--and most Britons, for that matter--will look hard, and probably in vain, to find any real grounds for controversy. Some in both countries may object that the movie treats its royalty with the special deference that Hollywood reserves for visiting dignitaries. But the story's stuffiness, as well as its sentimentality, has been filigreed with humor, and Producer-Scripter Nunnally Johnson has knowingly worked the combination into an enjoyable film.

The movie's awe of the Queen and her handsome surroundings proves an excellent foil for the incongruous invasion of Windsor Castle by a cockney ragamuffin (Andrew Ray), who absently spews a trail of plum pits as he wanders bug-eyed through the imposing halls and chambers. The picture also unbends enough to twit Victorian manners & morals.

At the head of an otherwise all-British cast, Actress Dunne shares honors with her make-up man for a competent, unspectacular performance. As Disraeli, Alec (Kind Hearts and Coronets) Guinness gives a superb reading of a long, eloquent speech in the House of Commons, turning the mudlark's adventure into an affair of state. Most of the time, however, Guinness plays with a mincing air that suggests Richard Haydn's caricature of an over-prim Englishman. The Mudlark owes its best performances to Finlay Currie, playing an outspoken, sozzled old Scot in the Queen's service, and eleven-year-old Actor Ray, who is altogether winning as the grimy orphan who wants a peek at the mother of the British Empire.

Mr. Music (Paramount) is a long, tired musicomedy so closely tailored to Bing Crosby's measure that he could play it in his sleep, and, in fact, appears to be doing just that. Typed again as a lazy, breezy dodger of responsibility, Crosby this time is a famous Broadway lyricist-composer who just won't settle down to work on Producer Charles Coburn's new show. Coburn hires prim Secretary Nancy Olson to discipline Bing. Love blooms, misunderstandings loom, Crosby croons, and the show goes on (with guest stars including Groucho Marx, Dorothy Kirsten and Peggy Lee). The general effect, devoid of zest or originality, is more like a radio variety show than a movie. Hardened Crosby fans will probably like it, but others might do well to season their popcorn with benzedrine.

Harvey (Universal-International), as playgoers learned in 1944, is an invisible rabbit well over six feet tall, the boon companion of a gentle, friendly lush named Elwood P. Dowd. The movie adapters of Mary Chase's Pulitzer Prize comedy have blessedly resisted the temptation to coax Harvey into full view.* Up to a point, they have even managed to recapture some of the Broadway production's daffy charm and prankish fun, and they have kept all of Josephine (Arsenic and Old Lace) Hull as its fluttery leading lady.

Unhappily, what the film also borrows from the play, and somehow makes more conspicuous, is a tendency to drag its feet for long stretches, especially during the virtually actionless last third of the story. What it fails to borrow, and needs most, is Vaudevillian Frank Fay. Actor Fay triumphed on Broadway as the daft Dowd whose example beckons his friends from the aggressively sane ways of the world to the wiser path of amiable lunacy. In his place, James Stewart, who has also played the role on the stage, gives an able actor's performance, but one that subtly dilutes the quality of the whole play.

Actor Fay wore the antic air of Elwood Dowd with poise, a sort of pride and a beautifully timed sense of deadpan clowning. Because he keyed his performance for comedy, he put surprise into some warm, touching speeches late in the play, when the character begins to make sense. On the screen, Dowd takes on the coloration of Stewart's movie personality: the gangling awkwardness, the fumbling, apologetic gestures, the verbal false starts. Though the warm passages are Stewart's meat, they come as no surprise, and Director Henry Koster gives them hothouse emphasis. Stewart's most persistent shortcoming also proves the most grievous: Fay's movements and timing made it seem that the big invisible rabbit was right there all the time, but Harvey never really turns up at Stewart's side.

*During the play's Boston tryout, its late Producer Brock Pemberton tried a version with an actor wearing a $600 rabbit costume, quickly gave up the idea.

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