Cinema: The New Pictures, Nov. 7, 1955

The Tall Men (20th Century-Fox). And the wind blew and the snow flew and before the censor could dig his way into the wilds of Montana and this script, Jane Russell is shacked up in a log cabin with Clark Gable, and there is nothing between them except grandmother's quilt. At night, while Jane lies sighing and stretching like a contented kitten, Clark gnaws happily at a piece of mule meat. "After a long ride," he explains, "I get hungry as a bear." In the morning Jane suggests a clubby breakfast. "I wish I was a peach tree," she sings, "a growin' in the ground . . . And if he wants them peaches of mine He'll have to climb the tree."

Pretty soon Cowpoke Clark is talking about a little vine-covered 'dobe on Prairie Dog Creek, but Jane won't hear of such "dirty, mangy, sod-bustin' livin'." She shoots straight: "Ah dream BIG." Clark fires back: "Ah dream SMAWWLLL." She takes up her quilt and walks. Enter the villain (Robert Ryan), who also dreams big. Ryan offers Jane the territory of Montana if she will let him assume her burden of quilt. She agrees, and he dresses her up like a real front-tier belle, but even as she is sprayed with Paris perfume, Jane cannot forget that able Gable. She watches him close while he drives Ryan's cattle from Texas to Montana. Come Sioux or stampede, jayhawker or dust devil, nothing bothers Clark—except, of course, the fact that he has to act. But like most of his parts, this one requires nothing much but his anxious little smirk. On the other hand, he seems comfortably conscious (as moviegoers will be awkwardly aware) that the winds which howl about his hairdo do not shake the trees in the processed backgrounds; and he arrives in Montana looking as fresh as a 54-year-old daisy can. At that point, Jane spreads her quilt for him again, and even the villain has to crawl. "He's what every boy wants to be when he grows up," Ryan reverently declares, "and what he wishes he had been when he's an old man."

The Trouble with Harry (Paramount) is the usual trouble with corpses: people can't let dead enough alone. A little boy (Jerry Mathers), playing in the woods, sees Harry first and runs to tell his mother (Shirley MacLaine). A retired tugboat captain and local poacher (Edmund Gwenn), who has just sent three rounds after a rabbit, finds Harry lying there with a little round blood spot on his forehead. "Oh, my!" he exclaims, for it is not hunting season. He is about to dispose of the evidence when the village spinster (Mildred Natwick) strolls by and. noticing Harry's distant manner, inquires politely, "What seems to be the trouble?" The captain explains, and the lady is most understanding. Their eyes meet. She blushes and offers him tea and a sympathetic muffin—after work.