Cinema: The New Pictures: Mar. 11, 1935

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The Whole Town's Talking (Columbia) is the story of a cringing little bookkeeper whose one remarkable characteristic is a facial resemblance to an escaped murderer whose picture is on all the front pages. The nightmare train of events into which this circumstance plunges Bookkeeper Jones starts when police arrest him, smilingly dismiss his apologetic explanations as the wily alibis of a desperate criminal. It continues when Jones, released with a safe-conduct to prevent his being arrested again, returns to his dingy room and finds Murderer Mannion waiting to steal the safe-conduct and use Jones as a decoy. It ends when Jones finally lives up to his brave exterior by helping to kill Mannion, collecting $25,000 reward, marrying the stenographer whom he has always bashfully adored.

As is likely to be the case with cinema stories which are genuinely suited to their medium, no recapitulation of the plot of The Whole Town's Talking can begin to convey its superlative qualities as entertainment. Equipped with material which they could have used as the basis for uproarious comedy or stark horror, Scenarists Jo Swerling and Robert Riskin and Director John Ford contrived to do both without giving their work at any point the appearance of a tour de force. A network of subsidiary plots—the sad misadventure of Jones's maiden aunt when she meets Killer Mannion; Mannion's astute revenge on a rival gangster who mistakes him for Jones—are brilliantly used to make the doings of little Jones the more strange, heroic, touching and preposterous. In his dual rôle, as Jones and Mannion, Edward G. Robinson gives his best performance since Little Caesar. Good shot: the mean, mysterious little man (Donald Meek) who first tells the police to arrest Jones, trying to collect the reward for capturing Mannion.

The Little Colonel (Fox). Annie Fellows Johnston's* story about the curly-headed tomboy who reconciles two warring factions of a Southern family has been thumbed religiously by nice little girls since 1895. "The Little Colonel" was full grown and on the road to matrimony before Mrs. Johnston was through with her. Shirley Temple is not quite six but, dressed up in flounces and high-button boots for this picture, she steps into a rôle cut down to her size with all the assurance of the capable actress she is. She reviews a regiment which has made her honorary colonel; tap dances with Bill Robinson; plays soldier with Lionel Barrymore; is the comfort of her mother's lonely life (Evelyn Venable) and even dresses up in Civil War hoopskirts to render "Love's Young Dream" on the harp.

Lionel Barrymore contributes the chief touch of originality by refusing to use a Southern accent. He is a patriarch who disowns his daughter for marrying a Yankee (John Lodge) and who later, won over by Shirley, turns up with a horse pistol just in time to save the Yankee's life and property. The only thing in the show which did not come out of the Ark is Negro Bill Robinson's dancing. He does his celebrated "Climb-the-Stairs" routine and contributes the finest butler's walk that ever reached the screen.