The New Pictures, Jun. 5, 1950

The Jackie Robinson Story (Eagle-Lion) tells how the Brooklyn Dodgers' second baseman struggled to make good as the first Negro to play openly in big-league baseball. It might have been a powerful movie stating the case for the U.S. Negro in terms that combined authenticity, drama and the irresistible appeal of an underdog's courageous fight to ultimate triumph. Fumbling, overtactful treatment has reduced it to considerably less. But the emotional potential of the film's raw material is so high that no ineptitude by the producers can keep the sparks entirely off the screen.

The best thing about the movie is Jackie Robinson himself, playing the title role. Burdened with some lines and situations that would weigh heavily on a professional actor, he gives a remarkably natural performance. Whatever his shortcomings as an actor, his playing mirrors not only a superb athlete but an earnest, thoroughly likable young man of uncommon moral stamina.

The picture fleetingly recounts the poverty of Robinson's California childhood, his all-around athletic record at U.C.L.A., his Army service, his difficulties at finding a job. Leaving home and the college sweetheart (Ruby Dee) he is later to marry, he gets on a Negro baseball team, travels in an old bus that doubles as a hotel and restaurant on long hauls through Jim Crow territory. Then Dodger Boss Branch Rickey (Minor Watson) offers him a contract with the Dodgers' Montreal farm team. Rickey's terms: Robinson must stay above reproach while proving himself as a hitter, fielder and base runner; he must turn the other cheek to the inevitable abuse of the crowds, the rival teams and his own teammates. A poorly written script suggests but hardly exploits the dramatic conflicts and personal anguish of Robinson's hard-won success, first with Montreal and then with the Dodgers. Its arguments for tolerance and fair play, as spoken flourishingly by Actor Watson, are overwrought and sometimes speciously reasoned. Its footage is cluttered with sports announcers telling the audience things that the picture ought to show. The movie even fails to make its baseball scenes look convincing. The fact that the moviegoer can nevertheless salvage something stirring out of these muffed opportunities is a better tribute to Robinson and his struggle than any made by the film.

In a Lonely Place (Columbia) is a Humphrey Bogart melodrama that seems to take forever getting to the point and just about as long driving it home. While marking time, it offers some trite glimpses of life in Hollywood after hours and the over-familiar love story of a hero-heel (Bogart) and a good-bad girl (Gloria Grahame).

Bogart, a movie scripter with high ideals and a low boiling point, is given to nasty outbursts in which he beats up friends, acquaintances and perfect strangers. When a checkroom girl is found strangled after an innocent visit to Bogart's apartment, the police suspect that she was the victim of one of his ugly moods. After an unconscionably long time, so does his girl friend, Gloria, who begins to wonder just when he will take a notion to bash her head in. Only a phone call from the police, who have caught up with the real murderer, keeps Bogart from strangling her out of pique.