THE CINEMA
4' Always In My Heart." At Warners.—" The Male Animal." At the Regal.
IN Warner productions the family is almost always musical. Scarcely a moment passes without one member or another in full song. In Always in my Heart father's skill on the piano has not prevented him from going to jail with a life sentence. Fortunately it is all a mistake, and he consoles himself by composing a some- what uninspired piece of work from which the film takes its title. Whilst this ex-professor of music (Walter Huston) conducts the prison orchestra his family is busy on the piano at home. Kay Francis, as the wife, is about to take another husband and thereby give her daughter the musical education to which her voice entitles her when father is pardoned and the whole family decides—remem-
bering the studio from which it springs—to live on music rather than the proceeds of teal-estate and speculation. The story is slight but for me altogether charming. As usual the children carry off all the laurels, and Frankie Thomas, Patty Hale and Gloria Warren (the new singing star) all are excellent.
The Male Animal is based on a James Thurber story and is a satire on the American educational system's dependence on revenue from athletics and its tendency towards deckledly ill-informed " red "- baiting. Unfortunately (football lovers being as numerous as they are) the barbs of the film are somewhat vaguely directed and only temporarily attach themselves to university trustees and the more muscle-bound alumni who have won in their youth immortal fame on the campus grid-iron. Henry Fonda is an unathletic young lecturer in English in revolt against brainless virility, and his per- sonal problem is the apparent affection of his wife (Olivia de Havi- land) for an enormous moron of an ex-football star. Rather unex- pectedly the hero solves his problems by reading to his class, in defiance of a political ban by the trustees, the famous last letter written by Vanzetti before his execution. The conscientious English teacher thereby demonstrates himself to be a hero not incomparable with those of the sports field and is hailed by trustees, wife, and pupils alike. As a whole, the film is uneven and disappointing but has moments of good broad comedy, an intelligent performance from Miss de Haviland and a quite exceptionally moving climax when Henry Fonda's reading of Vanzetti's brave and noble words breaks into the comedy like a sequence from a different and a very great film.
EDGAR ANSTEY.
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