News
Amid Boston Overdose Crisis, a Pair of Harvard Students Are Bringing Narcan to the Red Line
News
At First Cambridge City Council Election Forum, Candidates Clash Over Building Emissions
News
Harvard’s Updated Sustainability Plan Garners Optimistic Responses from Student Climate Activists
News
‘Sunroof’ Singer Nicky Youre Lights Up Harvard Yard at Crimson Jam
News
‘The Architect of the Whole Plan’: Harvard Law Graduate Ken Chesebro’s Path to Jan. 6
Believing that it had a movie of "special interest to the college student," Twentieth Century Fox staged a special snap preview of "Johnny Apollo" some seven weeks ago in Ossining, New York. They picked Ossining because the hero, to say nothing of most of the semi-minor characters, resides during the last forty-five minutes of the movie in a certain notorious neo-Gothic villa of that town. They invited the reviewers of thirty college newspapers to serve as an audience because the same hero spends the first three minutes in college and thereby creates what Mr. Zanuck-presumably calls "a college angle." Mr. Zanuck's angle, to use a contemporary idiom, is none too sharp.
The show opens with a classic scene portraying the indomitable five-foot-six Tyrone. Power as stroke on a varsity crew.
Somewhere three-quarters of the way from college to Sing Sing Tyrone meets up with Dotty, and she, the scheming wench, lifts her skirt two inches above her famous knees and by this most elementary of means turns his attention temporarily away from purely pecuniary sinning. Charley Grapewin, a crooked lawyer, spends all his time drinking a sickening mixture of scotch and milk until Lloyd Nolan, a rat of the second water in the inevitable role of a gangster, picturesquely stabs him to death with an icepick in a Turkish bath. A few double-crosses and prison breaks fail to thrill, except once when Tyrone almost gets killed. The most exciting scene in the movie, in fact, is one in which Dotty uses a bit of a dance as an excuse to assume a very effective substitute for her sarong of old and to reveal somewhat more than two inches above her knees--which fits in with the general tenor of the show in not appealing to one's intellectual perceptions. The drama closes with a honey of a finale when Scarlett O'-Lamour stages a walkout, leaving the audience just a touch in doubt (sic) as to whether or not she will ever see Tyrone again.
Besides Tyrone's thirty college guests the theatre was filled at the preview with a normal Saturday night crowd, who, until the name of the film was flashed on the screen after a little explanation, were absolutely unsuspicious of the "snap" preview trick. One of these Ossining burghers was overheard summing up the situation very neatly. Muttered he, "If I'd of known it wasn't Swiss Family Robinson I would of stayed home."
Want to keep up with breaking news? Subscribe to our email newsletter.