Cinema: The New Pictures: Jun. 17, 1940

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Women in War (Republic). Elsie Janis thoroughly enjoyed World War I. As soon as the U. S. was well in, the veteran actress, who since the age of five had been entertaining audiences with mimicry and handsprings, dashed off to France to entertain the doughboys. How she did it she later told with much gusto in her autobiography, So Far, So Good! "From the fuss that the fellows made over me, I'm sure they thought I must be at least the American edition of Bernhardt. Imagine their surprise when my performance consisted of telling stories filled with hells and damns. . . " The former Sweetheart of the A. E. F. devoted the ensuing years of peace to marrying Actor Gilbert Wilson, getting herself nearly killed in an automobile accident, turning deeply religious, settling down in California, where one day she popped into the minds that make Republic pictures.

That thrifty, busy studio, whose staple is westerns and whose fingers are close to the popular pulse, had a hunch. They decided to make a war picture, and thought of Elsie Janis. They also ran into unexpected opposition. In 1939 war did not seem as much fun to Actress Janis as in 1917. She agreed to play in a war picture on condition that she approved the script and that she be permitted to remark from time to time during the film that war is gruesome. She even objected when Director John Auer told her how to remark it.

"She has a mind of her own," says the studio. By the time this difficulty had been ironed out, together with the problems of some 20 other female players who watched each other on the set like cats, Women in War was ready for release. It could not have been better timed.

The picture itself is somewhat less sensational than its timing. Its plot is almost as involved as a peace treaty. Cinemactress Janis is Nurse O'Neil, who stalks around rather weirdly as the hardboiled, softhearted head of a female nursing unit at the front. She has had a past and it bobs up early in the picture in the highly attractive form of her equally hard-boiled daughter, Nurse Pamela (Wendy Barrie). Pamela has just inadvertently killed a popular drunken officer by pushing him through a balustrade. She turns nurse to make amends. Pamela does not know that Nurse O'Neil, whom she detests, is her mother. This discovery, the picture's climax, is effected with the help of a bang-up barrage which smashes to smithereens some valuable Republic sets of a French village, showers the cute and cowering nurses with dirt and plaster, but does not faze Elsie Janis.

Cinemaddicts who witnessed the architectural carnage thought Women in War was no Big Parade, but looked ominously like the start of one.

Brother Orchid (Warner). The making of movies is ringed about by taboos. But no commercial taboo is quite so terrifying as religious touchiness. Nevertheless, Hollywood has never been able to master an occasional whim to toy with the dangerous topic of religion. Brother Orchid is such a toying. It celebrates the spiritual regeneration of Edward G. Robinson (a gangster) by monastic life.