... Films of the Day Strong Spring Makes Watery Coffee By George Campbell IF the credit-list is evidence, My Son, My Son! is good. After dazing you with Madeleine Carroll, Brian Aherne, Louis Hayward, twenty-four other stars and featured players, the producer, director and original author, it goes on: Screen Play Lenore Coffee Photography Harry Stradling, A.S.C. Dialogue Director Stanley Logan Art ...

... By V. S. Pritchett THE autobiography of Constancia de la Mora, In Place of Splendour (Michael Joseph; 12s. 6d.), is a delightful, intimate and spirited account of the struggle of a rich and beautiful Spanish girl to get out of the Spanish Doll's House of upper-class life in Madrid before the civil war. I doubt if many people in England can imagine exactly what that life was like indeed, to the ...

... The Theatre: By Herbert Farjeon Lights Up! (Savoy) RE-ENTER Mr. Cochran. And about time, too. For-- speaking as a dramatic critic-- London isn't really London without him. And a war-- remembering the revues he put on during the last one-- isn't really a war. Those early Cochran revues were the first over here to combine wit with intimacy-- only when peace came did Mr. Cochran start making ...

... The Theatre By Herbert Farjeon Peril at End House Vaudeville THE ideal solution in a detective play takes you completely by sur prise and makes you feel a fool not to have thought of it; combining, like all the best things in the theatre, the un expected with the inevitable. What, however, usually hap pens in a detective play is that you guess the answer or, being told the answer, don't see ...

... The Theatre By Herbert Farjeon A House in the. Square (St. Martin's) THIS completely West End play by Diana Morgan begins where Mile- stones left off, takes us from 1910 to the present day, establishes periods, provides vehicles, starves for a story, and then, at the eleventh hour, dies of forcible feeding. The first act shows Lilian Braithwaite as old Lady Mount- stephan of Mountstephan House ...

... Films of the Day Chekhov à I'Américaine George Campbell MOST people-- I hope you 're not one of them-- are snobs about Shirley Temple. They laugh and cry at her pictures, and come out sneering. From this particular affectation I think I may claim to be free-- so much so that The Little Princess, in its quaint, sentimental and touching way, seemed to me one of the best pictures of 1939. In all ...

... The 44 Bystander Bookshelf Happy As Hell By V. S. Pritchett FROM slump to war and all of us accessories before the fact: that is the history of the '30's, and the novelists with a news sense are beginning to get to work on it. They are not being kind, but who is kind to the immediate past? Rising by stepping- stones of our dead selves to higher things, we are more inclined to smirk ...

... The Theatre By I lerbert Farjeon Clin Cliin ('.how'' Palace THEATRICAL history would seem to suggest that it takes a great war to get Chu Chin Chow on to the stage. Last war, when it was first pro duced, it ran for five years and 2238 performances, or nearly a thousand per formances more than any other piece presented in this country had ever run before. Then, for nineteen years, it lay, so ...

... By V. S. Pritchett HARD as nails, soft as sugar-plums, the American reporters are a rich man's children who would die rather than admit they did not know the world. They sweat after sophistication; Who's Who-- and even more, -- are their Ph.D. theses. Their other aim in life appears to be that of people who want to pass as having started a night club in a Methodist chapel. Life, liberty and ...

... The Theatre liy Herbert Farjeon Cottage to Let (Wyndham's) As soon as I set eyes on Trently (Peter Rosser), I came to the anxious conclusion that he was up to no good. It was not only that his complexion was pasty-- a bad sign in a spy play-- but that, having given notice to leave John Barington, the eccentric scientist (Leslie Banks), a few months before, he had now come back, on the eve of ...

... Films of the Day The Stars Look Down George Campbell I NEVER read The Stars Look Down. Consequently I saw the film without prejudice and can, I hope, assess it without the moanings of people who expect to find every character and incident remembered in the book. It seems to me terrific not exactly a cheerful substitute for the Crazy Gang on dark winter nights, perhaps, but an absorbing, ...

... Films of the Day Adaptations Roberts, Wallace, and Poor Shakespeare By George Campbell DURING the Seven Years War, when both British and French used Redskins in North America, the most appalling raids on British settle ments came from the Indian village of St. Francis, away up on the St. Lawrence. It was there that the savages took prisoners for torturing, and hundreds of scalps to decorate ...