Cinema: The New Pictures: Apr. 20, 1936

The Moon's our home (Paramount).

"Haven't I seen you somewhere before?" Henry Fonda asks Margaret Sullavan at one point in this picture and she, who from 1931 to 1933 was Mrs. Henry Fonda, answers, "Possibly. I'm the girl you mar ried once." However affecting the double-entendre of the exchange may be to people who know all about the private lives of Miss Sullavan and Mr. Fonda, the fact remains that up to the time at which this dialog is spoken, The Moon's Our Home is an agreeable effervescence, which then sags to a repetitious, overcomplicated ending.

Cherry Chester (Margaret Sullavan) meets and marries Anthony Amberton (Fonda) without knowing that he is a famed boy-explorer who has excited her professional jealousy. Amberton is equally ignorant that she is a cinemactress whom he dislikes because she has sponsored a musky perfume. A painful experience in Africa has so conditioned his reaction to musk that when, on their wedding night, his bride applies the sponsored product to her person, he forsakes her.

This scene, funny though it is, is not quite enough to make The Moon's Our Home diverting for the hour and 20 minutes it runs. Following the fashion, critics will doubtless credit Dorothy Parker and Alan Campbell with the many knowing lines and pleasant minor touches, hold the lesser scribblers who worked on the picture responsible for such hackneyed characterizations as Henrietta Crosman as a termagant grandmother whose heart is secretly abrim with kindness and Charles Butterworth in his infinitely tiresome reproduction of an infinitely tired young man.

The Great Ziegfeld (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). According to the curious credo of the U. S. theatre, the late Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. was an amalgamation of P. T. Barnum, Lucullus and St. Francis of Assisi. combining the advantageous features of all three, while the musical shows he produced were prodigies of good taste, imagination and romantic ingenuity. The Great Ziegfeld perpetuates this questionable legend with characteristic Hollywood insistence.

The picture starts off its hero (William Powell) as a barker at the Chicago World's Fair. He makes a fortune out of Sandow, the strong man, loses it at Monte Carlo, recoups in London by a contract with Anna Held (Luise Rainer) whom he steals from under the nose of his arch rival (Frank Morgan). He gives her a dozen orchids every day, makes her famed for her milk baths, eventually marries her. At this point, The Great Ziegfeld soars from the prose of fictionized biography into the poetry of revue. For 20 minutes, a huge revolving staircase exhibits showgirls, dancers and tableaux while a tenor sings A Pretty Girl Is Like A Melody. For fabulous extravagance, this sequence makes the real Ziegfeld Follies look like a burlesque show.