Cinema: The New Pictures: Aug. 21, 1933

Moonlight and Pretzels (Universal). The extraordinary thing about this musi-comedy is not that it resembles Forty-Second Street and Gold Diggers of 1933 in plot, pattern and environment; that it has the same type of dances, staged by Bobby Connolly, and the same type of songs ("Dusty Shoes'" for a finale instead of ''Forgotten Men"); or that its ingenue, Mary Brian, not only looks like Ruby Keeler but has obviously been coached to. speak in the same soft monotone. The surprising aspect of Moonlight and Pretzels is that it makes plausible Hollywood's profound conviction that repetition is the secret of success. It copies Warner Brothers' two hits even to the extent of being handsome and amusing.

Like its predecessors, this one starts off with George Dwight (Roger Pryor) frantically trying to put together a musi-comedy which displays a constant tendency to fall apart. Rival producers (the "Hobarts") try to buy the controlling interest. The leading lady (Lilian Miles) persuades a gambler friend (Leo Carillo) to foil the Hobarts by buying a piece of the show himself. He promptly loses it in a crap game and Sport Powell (Herbert Rawlinson), who wins it, unnerves Dwight by trying to make a pretty chorus girl (Mary Brian) the leading lady. A tiny vein of originality can be detected in the conclusion. Sport Powell gallantly gives the show to his chorus girl who, instead of playing the lead, gives the show back to Dwight, because she loves him. Then comes "Dusty Shoes."

Though it contains nothing so elaborate as the Gold Diggers' shadow waltz, and no songs likely to prove as catchy as those in Forty-Second Street, Moonlight and Pretzels has a little more authentic Broadway flavor than either. This and another advantage—that it cost Monte Brice and William Rowland, who produced it for Universal, only about $150,000—are probably due to the fact that it was manufactured not in Hollywood, but at Paramount's former (L. I.) studio which has been unused for two years.

Tarzan the Fearless (Sol Lesser). Although Japanese swimmers are by far the most efficient in the world, no one of them is likely to be elevated from his tank into the trees. The rôle of Tarzan in the cinema is reserved for U. S. paddlers like Johnny Weissmuller (for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) and Clarence ("Buster"') Crabbe, who are tall, ingenuous and shaggy at the ears. Crabbe has an advantage over Weissmuller in that he looks even less capable of speech. When he pats Jacqueline Wells on the chest in the last reel and says "That . . . mine. . . ." audiences should find this a feat of intellectual gymnastics even more exciting than his exploits upon vine-trapezes.