Cinema: The New Pictures: Sep. 27, 1937

That Certain Woman (First National-Warner Bros.). Warner Brothers paid $25,000 in court costs in England last fall to compel high-spirited Bette Davis to return to the fold after her rebellion against playing an uncongenial part (in God's Country and the Woman), and her demand that her salary be increased was refused. Actress Davis herself spent $18,000 opposing the action, could be made to pay the $25,000 court costs as well, since the studio has not yet executed its judgment against her for the amount.

In less precarious times, the role she is given in That Certain Woman might conceivably have evoked renewed protest from her, not that it lacks scope for her remarkable dramatic range, but because it heaps tragedy upon her with Sophoclean relentlessness, and because its wearying, buskined tread cannot pretend to vie with her more smartly-stepping 1937 successes, Marked Woman and Kid Galahad.

The story thrusts Bette Davis, as the widow of a slain gangster, into a topsy-turvy milieu, in which she becomes secretary to a whimsical and unhappily married lawyer (Ian Hunter) and the one-night bride of a thoroughbred weakling (Henry Fonda). His uncompromising father forces an annulment, the young man goes obediently abroad to marry another (Anita Louise), unaware that he is leaving an unborn son behind him. On this star-crossed situation there follow several slow-footed years, distinguished in the film by bright directorial fillips and badly managed transitions, while the Furies mobilize for the unreasonable onslaught that is to come. Author-Director Edmund Goulding supplies what the film industry knows as a Keystone finish (and a happy one).

That Certain Woman is what is known as a players' picture; everyone gets the call, and everyone responds with all the theatrical craft he can summon up. It indicates a lesson learned from the Britons and the French: the tendency to use big-name players in parts that come close to being "bits."

Something to Sing About (Grand National) is nothing to make a song about, but it returns two-fisted Cinemactor James Cagney to his theatrical nonage of 1924, when he was just one of the boys tapping routines in vaudeville. Though still unable to startle the dance world, he does unveil a new, more versatile Cagney. As Terry Rooney, Manhattan band leader, he is called to Hollywood for the great opportunity. He leaves his girl, Rita (Evelyn Daw), to wait until he has demonstrated once more how a star is born. Studio specialists on clothes, coiffure, and voice view him with alarm. He refuses a Robert Taylor widow's peak, practices voice culture with, "The Dyuke blyew on his hunting horn and loffed, ha, ha, ha, when the hounds came running." Baffled by pear- shaped vowels, he escapes to the set where the old Cagney reasserts itself in two brawls, one in the script, the other extemporaneous.