THE MOVIEGOER

All menfolk except newspaper editors are heels in "The Lady From Cheyenne," with the result that the old West is going hell-for-leather to the dogs. It takes indignant women, storming from the home with cocked parasols, to transform the wild country into the good, solid U. S. A. Happily, the writers of this movie do not actually believe their legend, confessing in a whimsical prologue that they only "like to think so." Their product is thus an agreeable cross between the conventional horse-opera and a humorous study of the woman suffragette.

In its casting, the film lends itself to an unfortunate study in contrast. For though Loretta Young may be the most beautiful woman in Hollywood, Robert Preston certainly rates as one of the most repulsive of box-office gorillas. As a naive Quaker schoolmarm from back East, Miss Young artfully rouses the respectable citizens of her infant boomtown against the skullduggery of Boss Edward Arnold; while Preston, his number one yes-man, stumbles haplessly through the routine of love and reformation.

Joan Blondell was recently voted the ideal American mother. In several buxom lingeric scenes from "Model Wife," the second feature, the reasons for this become obvious. Otherwise, the movie is potential material for Lampy's "worst of the year" file. It is hard to decide who is hammiest, Miss Blondell, hubby Dick Powell or other-man Lee Bowman in the transparent love-plot involving secret marriage and desire-for-baby. "Model Wife" has two redeeming features, the expert comedy acting of Charles Ruggles, and the fact that the clam-faced Powell is not called upon to sing.