CRIMSON PLAYGOER

Problem: what is the proper deportment when one meets an enraged lion at one's elbow at a formal dance? Hollywood, the nation's mind, sets itself to solve this riddle in the current offering at the University, "Central Park," and in the process answers a thousand other equally important questions of deportment that Emily Post passed by. It takes some 17 corpses, an armored car with no end of gangsters, a lunatic, and a number of amiable and stupid minions of the law, but the answers are all there in the end. And so are Joan Blondell, the wise little girl from Three Rivers, Illinois, and Wallace Ford, the rip-roaring cow-puncher from Peach Springs, Arizona, in each other's arms. It's very sweet, and all so terribly exciting. The horrid audience just would insist on laughing the rude things!

Will Rogers, appearing as a tramp in the other feature, succeeds again in doing what only he can do: making a soppingly sentimental plot not only bearable, but enjoyable. This story, taken from Ben Ames Williams' "Jubilo," gives him a chance to display all his talents. There's pathos and there's slapstick comedy, there's sentimentality and there's wisecracking. And Marion Nixon as the sweet and Innocent daughter doesn't hurt it a bit.

Anybody afflicted with the midyear litters will have a fine chance to get rid of them during the rest of the bill.