Class Timberlane

From a pasty, undistinguished Sinclair Lewis novel, Metro-Gold wyn-Mayer has taken a title, a handful of characters, and a setting. Right about there the Hollywood adaptation of "Cass Timberlane" leaves Mr. Lewis and trundles its own merry way down the ancient trail where boy meets girl meets problem meets inevitable happy ending.

In this case, it's judge meets girl. Spencer Tracy, in the title role, is a judge in Grand Republic, Minnesota, who falls in love with a girl from across the tracks. Their marriage beings to fall apart after their baby is born dead. The girl (Lana Turner) gets fed up with Grand Republic and Tracy's upperclass friends, and breaks with the judge because he won't live in New York. They are at last reunited, however, when Zachary Scott, a suave bachelor to whom she flees for consolation, explains that he really doesn't want her after all.

The novel purported to be a serious treatment of the problem of marriage in America. The picture makes only a taken stab at this theme. Tracy solemnly remarks at several points that divorces are all to frequent, and a few brief scenes are tossed in to show just how nasty' wealthy middle-aged couples can be to each other. MGM does not venture further than this. Instead, it presents a moderately dreary love story and allows Lana Turner to run wild. She wallops a home run in a softball game, gawks at a specimen of modern art in New York, loses her temper four times, and even leaps from a moving automobile. Through all of this, Spencer Tracy plows doggedly ahead. His scenes with a kitten--cats make him sneeze--are about the only ones that really click. The kitten, however, is too often gerrymandered out of the spotlight in favor of the heroine, who suffers by comparison. And placed side by side with Lewis's somewhat shallow novel, so does the picture.