The Moviegoer

This week the Metropolitan introduces a new policy, substituting a second feature for the stage show. Certainly this should be welcome news for Boston, as it indicates a swing away from the practice of padding programs with poor vaudeville. Poor pictures are usually easier to take than poor vaudeville.

As luck would have it, this week's pictures are poor. Like all of its predecessors, the "Big Broadcast," 1938 model, is a conglomeration of music, humor and specialty acts strung together by the merest phantom of a story. Hollywood's one and only William Clark Fields is sometimes funny but more often clumsy and silly as he struts about barking wise cracks and chewing his large cigar. At his best in a very unconventional game of golf, he provides the film with a few good moments; but when he is gone, there is little left. To be sure, here is a dramatized history of the waltz, which is new; but the songs by Dorothy Lamour, Shirley Ross, and Martha Raye, and various novelty bits follow conventional lines.

About "Scandal Street," the co-feature, little that is complimentary can be said. It has no plot, no star, and no acting; it is dull, familiar, and insipid. Its one redeeming feature is the rather pretty face of one Louise Campbell, the poor innocent girl who is almost ruined by the villainous town gossips.