MOVIEGOER

Since the policy of the Gayety Theatre does not encourage either previews or reviews of its current screen offerings (the management feels that such comment will fall to do full justice to its shows), this is the first and perhaps the last excursion of The Moviegoer into the lair of naughty, risque films.

"Missing Girls" exposes the bitter truth about the secret evil that warps clean young souls, ruins strong bodies, and shatters brilliant minds. Did you know that 50,000 young girls disappear every year? Where do they go? What do they do? The answer to these perplexing questions originally ran to ten full reels, but the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has done us the favor of deleting the more boring passages and the version at the Gayety has been reduced to six.

Stark drama is present from the opening scene. Daughter has been out after 8 o'clock. She returns--father is angry-- father strikes daughter--tears--mother pleads with father--more tears--daughter leaves for New York.

The plot of "Missing Girls" is closely autobiographical, for its author, Matin Mooney, was a New York newspaper man who period into that city's underworld ten years ago and was martyred by a jail sentence for insisting on the journalistic principle of refusing to reveal his sources of information. For all who remember this stirring episode in American newspaper history, "Missing Girls," featuring inimitable performances by such Hollywood notables as Roger Pryor, and Muriel Evans, is a must.

Of Elsa Maxwell's 1939 hit, "Hotel for Women," all the Moviegoer can say in that it fails to achieve the dramatic intensity of its co-feature.