CRIMSON PLAYGOER

We cover quite a healthy bit of territory and time at the University this week--from the Mississippi in the wild fifties to the Congo in the almost equally wild nineteen-thirties with a short stopover to prove that "Crime Doesn't Pay."

Let's start at home with W. C. Fields and his lads and lasses of the showboat in "Mississippi." We may be a bit biassed, but we must consider Bill Fields the most interesting item in any picture which is fortunate enough to be graced by his bulbous-nosed presence. When his main rival for honors is Bing Crosby, there should be little opposition to our prejudice. In "Mississippi" Fields is good--not quite as good as he has been, but still highly amusing. His lines show a little heavy-handed brushing over, but his voice and ingratiating manner are unchanged and score their points with usual effect. The rest of the matter is connected with the mating of Bing Crosby and Joan Bennet--a long and difficult process featured by several good ballads and much insipidity--both registered by Mr. Crosby--and the customary blond Bennet beauty.

Now for darkest Africa with the Johnson's and a camera. Like the run of African travel and adventure pictures "Baboona" presents the usual run of superfluously numerous animal pictures filmed against African sunsets. There is the customary struggle for life and love among the beasts with customary soporific effect on the majority of the onlookers.

The short subject, which is very moral, seems to represent the beginning of a series of "uplift" two-reelers fighting against crime. This particular one dramatizes a very clever crime and then shows us that the federal agents most always get their man. The crime is so skillful and the entrance of the policemen so fortuitous that we felt quite stimulated to our first major crime, Q.E.D.