Cinema: The New Pictures, Mar. 31, 1952

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Deadline—U.S.A. (20th Century-Fox) casts Humphrey Bogart as the crusading managing editor of a big-city daily whose actions are worthy of the most intrepid Hollywood hero. Bogart 1) tangles with an underworld vice czar, 2) roughs up a witness in a murder case involving the mink-clad body of the standard beautiful blonde, 3) wins a reprieve for his foundering, 47-year-old newspaper, the Day,* 4) wins back his divorced wife (Kim Hunter), 5) calls his publisher's old widow (Ethel Barrymore) "Baby."

Deadline avoids such clichés of movie journalism as the whisky-soaked reporter who shouts "Stop the presses!" It even presents some vigorously authentic city-room atmosphere. But, for a picture that aims to be a factual exposition of the free American press, it indulges in too much cinematic sensationalism, emerges as little more than a second-rate film about the fourth estate.

The Belle of New York (MGM) lets Fred Astaire dance on just about everything from a horsecar to thin air. In fact, the picture itself is mostly thin air. It is a Technicolor trifle in which Astaire, a turn-of-the-century playboy, falls head over dancing heels in love with Vera-Ellen, a mission worker who also dances. Revivalist Vera-Ellen saves Sinner Astaire, but not all their fast stepping can quite save a plodding picture. This pretty period piece is punctuated with a few chuckles provided by Marjorie Main as a Park Avenue dowager and Keenan Wynn as Astaire's comic sidekick.