The New Pictures

My Man Godfrey (Universal). Farce, like souffle, can't be warmed over. Back in 1936, when this piece of fluff came hot from Hollywood, it was crisp and light with the most expensive ingredients (William Powell and Carole Lombard). But a couple of decades have somehow taken the puff out of the stuff. At second serving it looks, as the French say of second servings, a little senile.

The new plot is much the same as the old. A rich young girl (June Allyson) collects a dockside derelict (David Niven), takes a liking to the fellow, and offers him a job as the family butler. To everybody's surprise, he buttles superbly, bottles seldom, and battles tirelessly for the best interests of his employers--a group of people about as easy to live with as a family of full-grown crocodiles. In the end, of course, the butler has the crocodiles eating out of his hand, and in the final frame the charming little beast who found him snaps him up in marriage.

It's an amusing situation--so why isn't it a more amusing picture? Allyson and Niven can hardly be expected to fill the bill with anything like the inspired inanities of which Lombard and Powell were capable. But the real fault seems to lie with Director Henry Koster. who apparently has not learned that even a good joke can be spoiled by bad timing.

Perri (Buena Vista) is a squirrel who, presumably, was walking along the main stem one day, minding her own business, when along came a fellow from the Walt Disney studios and asked her how she would like to be in pictures--not in any old cartoon, but in a brand-new sort of thing called "a true-life fantasy." Assuming that her squeals were intended to signify delight, the fellow promptly popped her into a crate, and away she went bouncing to fame and misfortune.

They gave her the big buildup. In the first days of shooting she was photographed--in Technicolor, of course--peeping through the autumn foliage, splashing in her swimming pool, lounging in her penthouse, peeking roguishly from underneath the rumpled bedclothes. No doubt remembering the animated vermin that made such a popular success as Cinderella's coachman, Producer Disney surrounded her with plenty of cute little "real-life" mice. He also plumped up the supporting cast with the famous bunny brigade, the

Disney equivalent of Mack Sennett's bathing beauties, and added to that the well-known family of skunks. He even permitted Bambi to make a guest appearance in the picture--anyway, when a young buck appears, that's who the narrator says he is.

The musical score of the film is everything a squirrel could ask for. When the animals sleep, a choir of angels breathes over them what sounds almost exactly like Brahms's Lullaby but turns out to be an original composition by George Bruns, the man who wrote Davy Crockett. When Perri sleeps, she dreams in a combination of live and animated effects, just like other movie stars, and the dream figures engage in the usual elaborate ballet--though of course they are not people, but dear little bunnies. Producer Disney has even provided Perri with a love interest: a bushy-tailed charmer named Porro. As Porro chatters away at Perri in squirrel language, Narrator Winston Hibler translates the scene in a voice so warm and soft that children in the audience may almost mistake it for Perri's own. "To every creature." he gently explains, "comes the time of together . . . Perri understands . . . her moment of fulfillment is at hand."

The commentary to a Disney film is always a literary experience. What puts this narration in a class by itself is that it is written, by Narrator Winston Hibler and Co-Director Ralph Wright, in verse for the most part--what might be called squirrelerel. Sample:

This is the perfect plan that nature

has contrived:

Some must die that others may

survive , . .

[But] many live to run away, And death can wait for another day.

It is on this cheery note that Perri is introduced to the hard facts a squirrel is up against in the world of Walt Disney. She is mauled by a goshawk, ripped up by a weasel, and almost torn to pieces by a marten--a lean and eager individual with a bright red tongue that lolls out in an unpleasant way. A forest fire burns down her house, and she winds up in the middle of a beaver pond, riding on the back of a bobcat. On top of all this, Perri will probably not get much sympathy from the critics. But it will be a crying shame if she and her helpless colleagues don't get some vigorous sympathy from the A.S.P.C.A.

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