Cinema: The New Pictures, Jan. 19, 1953

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The Clown (MGM) is a remake of the 1931 success, The Champ, in which Wallace Beery played a broken-down prizefighter and Jackie Cooper his worshipful young son. In this version, Red Skelton plays a broken-down funnyman with Tim Considine as the youngster.

As in the original, The Clown consists mostly of variations on one situation: a brave little boy keeping a stiff upper lip in the face of his dad's continual boozing and crapshooting. This he accomplishes largely by saying "Aw, gee" and looking forlornly at the camera. As in the original version, the father dies at the fadeout—in this case, after having made good on a television show.

The Clown gives TV Comic Skelton an opportunity to perform one of his specialties: drunk and pratfall routines. But the picture is mostly an unblushing jerker of glycerin tears.

Thunder in the East (Paramount). At one point in this oriental melodrama, one of the characters describes Alan Ladd as "Sir Galahad, Horatio at the bridge and Robin Hood, all wrapped up into one." The description is incomplete. Playing a rough & ready adventurer, Ladd lands in the Indian state of Gundahar with a planeload of guns and ammunition at a time when bandit forces are converging on the Maharajah's palace. The Maharajah's adviser (Charles Boyer), a Gandhi-like character, is an adamant believer in the virtues of nonresistance, an attitude which mystifies Ladd.

In short order, Ladd beards the bandit leader in his camp and has a man-to-man chat with him, helps a good many of the British colony fly out of Gundahar, and, with the help of the suddenly war-minded Boyer, cuts down the enemy with ma chine guns. In the process he also wins the affections of a blind British girl (Deborah Kerr). Thunder in the East is a flabby, farfetched thriller whose melodramatics come across as only a muted rumble on the screen.