Movies in the Sunday News
Hedda Hopper dished the Hollywood gossip for the Daily News and the Chicago Tribune syndicate. Amidst her West Coast coverage, she had an item about the Copacabana in NY which was setting aside May 19 as Abbott and Costello night. It was a $50 a-head-dinner benefiting the Lou Costello Jr. Foundation Fund. [The comedian’s infant son had drowned in the family swimming pool in 1943 just before Costello was set to do his comeback radio broadcast after his own recovery from rheumatic fever. He subsequently set up a foundation in his son’s honor to help underprivileged kids.] Hopper also reported that some of the rooms from the former Cornelius Vanderbilt mansion on Fifth Avenue had been imported to Hollywood to be used in “The Bachelor’s Daughter.” Among her Hollywood items was the denial by twenty-year-old actress Angela Lansbury’s of the rumor that she was splitting with her husband, 36-year-old actor Dick Cromwell. She had moved in with her mother, she said, because both she and her husband were suffering from the flu. [The couple subsequently divorced but remained friends. In recent years, Lansbury revealed that she had discovered her husband was bisexual.] The lead column item was about the upcoming production of “Sea of Grass” to star Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. Harry Carey was returning to the screen in the movie after a two-year absence. Elia Kazan was directing.
The paper reported on April 14 that Lana Turner and her two-year old daughter Cheryl had flown to New York from Los Angeles on a TWA Constellation accompanied by Lana’s latest beau, ABC executive Charles P. Jaeger, who was traveling incognito. The couple had been photographed nightclubbing together in both cities but Jaeger denied a serious involvement. Debonair Hollywood Frenchman Charles Boyer was also in town with his wife and told the News that they had been theatergoing, taking in "State of the Union," "Born Yesterday" and "The Glass Menagerie ” on Broadway.
Veteran celebrity journalist Florabel Muir reported from Hollywood that "Mr. Shirley Temple," the 24 year-old former Air Force sergeant John Agar, had signed an acting contract with David Selznick. Agar had met the former child star, now approaching her 18th birthday, at a swimming party given by comic actress ZaSu Pitts. They had been married since September. According to Muir, Selznick had secretly screen tested the young man without Shirley’s knowledge. The actress was also under contract to Selznick.
Photos of alluring young starlets were a staple of the News. On this day Frances Rafferty and Rosemary LaPlanche drew the honor. The caption revealed that twenty-three year old actress and pin-up girl Rafferty, who was shown "cooling off" in a bathing suit, had filed for divorce from John E. Harlan, the recently discharged Army major she had married in 1944. [Rafferty mostly appeared in B-movies in the 1940s. Older boomers might remember her from the popular 1950s TV series “December Bride.”] Rafferty could be seen that week at some neighborhood houses in "She Went to the Races," the second feature paired with "Scarlet Street." Rosemary LaPlanche, Miss America 1941, pictured relaxing demurely at home, had her “first real chance” at Hollywood stardom with a lead role in "The Devil Bat's Daughter," according to the News. Up to now she had only had bit parts. [LaPlanche never made it big in Hollywood. She is best remembered for having won her title the year after being named first runner up, leading Miss America to ban contestants from competing more than once.)
Penny Singleton, star of the "Blondie" movies and radio series based on the popular comic strip, was on the cover of the Coloroto photo magazine supplement.
The paper also ran a chart with their assessment of the major first or limited run movie attractions. Here is the newspaper's take this week:
****
“Lost Weekend” at the Brooklyn Paramount
“The Green Years” at Radio City
*** ½
“The Spiral Staircase” at the Brooklyn Albee
“Ziegfeld Follies” at the Capitol
“Saratoga Trunk” at the Hollywood
“The Bandit of Sherwood Forest” at the Loew’s Criterion
“Road to Utopia” at the Paramount
“Dragonwyck” at the Roxy
“Open City" at the World
***
“Spellbound” at the Astor
“The Wife of Monte Cristo” at the Globe
“Deadline at Dawn” at the RKO Palace
“Kitty” at the Rivoli
“Devotion” at the Strand
“Tomorrow is Forever” at the Winter Garden
Reviews ran in the April 14 issue, of several pictures that had just opened. Kate Cameron dismissed "Without Dowry," the latest Soviet import playing at the Stanley, with a two star rating, citing the overacting, poor photography and disjointed continuity. However, she reported, the film seemed to please the majority at the Stanley, which played Soviet films almost exclusively and was a popular entertainment venue for Communist Party members and sympathizers. Noel Meadow, a Broadway and film press agent, had bought the theater in 1942. It is unclear to this day to what extent, if any, he was a committed Communist rather than merely a businessman serving a niche audience. He does not appear to have been the target of any serious investigation during the witch hunt and he used the theater as a springboard to become a distributor and promoter of foreign films, with a particular emphasis on documentaries.
"Ralston On Ice Not So Hot in Murder Mystery" read the headline over Dorothy Masters' review of the Vera Hruba Ralston vehicle "Murder in the Music Hall,” giving it a mediocre grade of two-and-a-half stars. Masters found the mystery plot serviceable and had kind words for the supporting cast but slammed the "ineffective staging" and the costumes of Miss Ralston's interpolated ice skating numbers. Two-and-a-half stars was also the verdict of Wanda Hale for "When a Mexican Loves" ("Cuando Quiere un Mexicano"), the Spanish-language Mexican comedy of mistaken identity playing at the Belmont Theatre, which specialized in Spanish-language films.
The News was notorious for its lenient reviews of big-budget movies from the major studios. Patterson invented “Kate Cameron” after Paul Gallico, who later became the paper’s acclaimed sports editor and a popular fiction writer, was booted from his film-reviewing post for being overly critical of Hollywood output; the studios and theaters, after all, were major advertisers and most News readers were movie fans not highbrow connoisseurs.
The News carried an ad for a duo of exploitation films playing at the Miami on 6th and 43rd Street. "Guilty Parents" was billed as a "tragic lesson in 2 kinds of love which solves the problem of father, mother, sister and brother" and "Primitive Love," the "story of a thousand adventures in a land of a million dangers and a strange kind of love." The thumbnail illustration showed a gorilla cradling a human baby. These movies were seldom as titillating as their titles and ads suggested but still drew the attention of arrested adolescents.