Cinema: The New Pictures: Oct. 16, 1939

(2 of 2)

Eternally Yours (United Artists) is a warning to professional magicians not to pull bishops' granddaughters out of parish houses and marry them, if they want to go on pulling rabbits out of top hats. Luscious Loretta Young and trig little David Niven amusingly maintain this improbable thesis in a picture which has enough pace, patter, parachute jumping, Hugh Herbert and the New York World's Fair to make 99 minutes of 90-proof-enjoyable Hollywood hokum.

Love triumphs over prestidigitation when Anita (Loretta Young), granddaughter of big-nosed, bumbling Bishop Peabody (C. Aubrey Smith), marries Tony (David Niven). Tony is a dashing magician, The Great Arturo, and Anita would gladly be sawed in two or go through a double-bottomed trunk for him. But while Tony is happy making parachute jumps with his hands shackled, Anita is secretly pining for her dream-home in New England.

When Tony just wants to go on getting out of handcuffs, Anita runs away, divorces him, and with the help of twittery Aunt Abby (Billie Burke) marries a homier husband. Ingenious scripters keep marriage No. 2 from being consummated until Tony catches up with Anita and the broad-minded bishop discovers that she can get out of her divorce from Tony as easily as he gets out of handcuffs. When, after his foregone recovery from a parachute fall at the World's Fair Anita takes Tony to the dream-home, he sees this is one that even The Great Arturo cannot get out of.

Good shot: softhearted, hungry Hugh Herbert trying an axe on his pet trained rabbit, missing because he cannot bear to look at what he is doing.