Cinema: The New Pictures Sep. 22, 1930

Big Boy (Warner). A new picture starring Al Jolsonlis known beforehand to be little save a skeletal frame upon which he may hang gags ancient and new, plug sentimental ballads, caper through dance steps and behave in the approved Jolson manner. Big Boy is a cinemized version of the musicomedy of the same name in which he appeared for the Shuberts five years ago, a hackneyed, outlandish tale of a proud Southern family staking all on the Kentucky Derby, blackmailers, a forged check, an errant son, a happy musicomedy ending. Big Boy is the horse on which Jolson as Gus, the maligned faithful Negro jockey ultimately rides to victory.

When young Master Jack Bedford lies about orders he has given Gus, Gus is discharged. As a waiter in a Louisville restaurant he overhears the plot against the Bedfords, foils the villains, returns to the Bedford stables in time to ride Big Boy to victory against a field of jockeys weighing pounds less than himself. Jolson in the plot is innocuous, often preposterous, unhampered by the story: singing, quipping, dancing, rolling his eyes and giving the Jolson public oldtime Jolson nonsense from the days before he got mixed up with Sonny Boy. That both Warner and Jolson know Jolson's acting limitations is evidenced by two sequences. The first is a flashback to post Civil war days in which Jolson as Gus's grandfather captures a villainous Southern fire-eater and, ahorse, rescues his beauteous young mistress, successfully burlesquing the ancient slave-master tradition. The second is the fade-out—the cast out of character formally grouped on a painted stage with orchestra below and Jolson with his face washed white expressing the wish that his cinema audience enjoyed themselves as much in sitting through the picture as he did in making it. Silliest shot: Jolson saying goodby to Big Boy after being discharged.

The Squealer (Columbia). Davey Lee who stepped from urchinhood to stardom with Al Jolson is the squealer. His gangster-chief father Charles Hart (Jack Holt) has just killed the leader of a rival gang and is hiding from the dead man's cronies. Davey as Bunny does not know that he has told a mortal enemy the whereabouts of his father. To save her husband from certain death Mrs. Hart (Dorothy Revier) weepingly calls in the Law. Father Hart is caught in time by the police and sentenced to seven years for manslaughter. In prison the sore festers, he is convinced that his wife has rid herself of him in order to take up with Sheridan, his "best friend" (Matt Moore). Follows a prison break in which Hart escapes and returns to his home, vengeance-bent. As he enters he overhears his spouse retailing to Sheridan how she saved her husband from his enemies' submachine guns. Remorse stings him and with an amazing lack of logic for such a hard man he walks from his home into the trap he has laid for Sheridan.