The New Pictures, Nov. 1, 1948

(2 of 3)

The taming of these once adventurous spirits is mildly depressing to watch. When the plot borders on the dreary, Director George Sidney and Scenarist Robert Ardrey brighten things up with more shots of Dancer Kelly's graceful gymnastics. Since the musketeers never fight at odds of less than 20 to 1 (against them, of course) they have an uphill job unraveling the intrigues of the Queen of France (Angela Lansbury), the Duke of Buckingham (John Sutton) and the unctuous Richelieu (Vincent Price).

In the end D'Artagnan gives up skewering his enemies to settle down in the country with a seamstress at the court (June Allyson). He might have done well to take along his manservant (Keenan Wynn), whose comic talents occasionally save Musketeers from the doldrums.

The Technicolor is good enough to deserve a special mention.

A Song Is Born (Samuel Goldwyn; RKO Radio) may not be entirely satisfactory to either hep cats or squares. Jazz addicts will want to take the picture home with them, to listen again & again to the jam sessions of Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Charlie Barnet, Mel Powell, Lionel Hampton and Louis Armstrong. To those who are mystified by popular music, these names will add up to much noise and little sense. A Song is designed as a starring vehicle for Danny Kaye, but he is almost drowned out in the blare.

When the plot of A Song* is serving only as a link between jam sessions, it is useful and quietly inoffensive. When it brims over into outlandish muggajuggery about gangsters, a torch singer (Virginia Mayo) and a crew of antiquated musicologists, the yarn gets in the way of the hot licks. The plottiness dooms Kaye to the role of master of ceremonies. He handles his interludes adroitly, but some are overlong. And a hep cat can't wait.

Station West (RKO Radio) stars Dick Powell as an undercover Army officer. The setting is the Far West, perhaps 70 years ago. Jane Greer is a girl named Charlie who runs the saloon, the mining town itself, and practically everything in the neighborhood. Lieut. Powell suspects that she also runs the bandit gang which has murdered two soldiers who were guarding a gold shipment. In the course of hounding down the culprits for the Government, Dick gets beaten up and held up. In quieter moments, he listens to Burl lves sing, and passes the time of day with Charlie.

Late in the show, there is a good, rousing fire, and in the long run the hero makes one part of the West safe for bullion runners. It is all moderately entertaining formula, done with a slight extra edge of care, humor and understanding—except for Jane Greer.

Miss Greer wears an extensive and luscious assortment of jigsawed gowns, and uses her eyes, mouth and bosom so effectively that it soon becomes clear that she was born too late. Back in the disreputable old days of silent movies, when sex was sex, she would have become a major star very fast. Today, she seems as anachronistic as a Virginia royalist. But it is a pleasure to watch her work.