THE SCREEN; 'Tonight and Every Night,' Film Musical, With Hayworth, at the Music Hall
The New York Times Bosley Crowther
Pungent, hard-boiled whodunit via Chandler. Second and best of three versions.
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With a blitzed London theatre as the locale and the-show-must-go-on as the theme—you know, chin up and face the music while the bombs are coming down—Victor Saville has shaped a very pleasant and sentimentally romantic musical film for Columbia under the title of "Tonight and Every Night." He has got some melodious songs for it, he has dressed it in lovely pastel shades and he has given it all to Rita Hayworth and a most agreeable cast to play. If your taste is for gaiety touched with pathos, you will find it at the Music Hall. Our ventured guess is that it will be there for quite a little while.Mr. Saville has fetched his story from the mildly successful play of Leslie Storm called "Heart of a City." And it is the story of a London revue troupe, starring the quite American Miss Hayworth, which continues to give nightly shows despite the blitz and some rather heavy pressure upon the hearts of Miss Hayworth and other stars. That pressure derives from her involvement with a most charming RAF man, played by Lee Bowman, who, at one point—well, you know how things are during a war.By the grace of some able script writing and Mr. Saville's directorial care, the story never drops to maudlin bathos. In fact, it rather keeps a gallant air. And it permits an appropriate succession of music and dance interludes. Miss Hayworth is fetching in the first one, "What Does an English Girl Think of a Yank?" and she puts forth some radiance and talent in a ballet number, "Cry and You Cry Alone." "You Excite Me" is her Hit Parade tempter and she teams very nicely with Janet Blair in a comic song skit, wherein the two play service ladies, called "The Boy I Left Behind."Miss Blair draws the song plum, however. It is the title number and it is smartly produced against a highly original background representing an animated newsreel screen. And Marc Platt, the interpretive dancer who helped make "Oklahoma!" what it is, gets the nod as the show's big sensation with the brilliant solo dance that he does. Mr. Platt's flying leaps in this picture should carry him to Hollywood heights.A glowing word, too—and that is meager—for the film's exceptional décor, for the svelte and subtle use of subdued colors in settings and costumes. It is pleasant to see a color picture which avoids the shocking, livid hues and gratifies the visual sense rather with mellow, sophisticated shades. Indeed, Mr. Saville's whole picture is in a smooth and sophisticated style. It is nice to be able to recommend it for a musical hour and a half.

TONIGHT AND EVERY NIGHT, screen play by Lesser Samuels and Abem Finkel; based on the play "Heart of a City," by Leslie Storm; music by Jule Styne; lyrics by Sammy Cahn; produced and directed by Victor Saville for Columbia Pictures. At the Radio City Music Hall.Rosalind Bruce . . . . . Rita HayworthJudy Kane . . . . . Janet BlairPaul Lundy . . . . . Lee BowmanTommy Lawson . . . . . Marc PlattAngela . . . . . Leslie BrooksThe Great Waldo . . . . . Professor LambertiToni . . . . . Dusty AndersonLeslie Wiggins . . . . . Stephen CranePhotographer . . . . . Jim BannonMay Tolliver . . . . . Florence BatesSam Royce . . . . . Ernest CossartRev. Gerald Lundy . . . . . Philip MerivaleDavid Long . . . . . Patrick O'MooreCroup Captain . . . . . Gavin MuirMurder and assorted violence continue to be the order of the day at the Palace, where a superior piece of tough melodrama called "Murder, My Sweet," arrived yesterday, a few hours after the departure of that other intriguing study of crime, "The Woman in the Window." This sort of fare has been going on at the Palace since the first day of the year, when "Experiment Perilous" arrived to delight the armchair gumshoes. Three such hit pictures in a row is enough to turn any respectable theatre into a chamber of horrors, so there's no telling what sort of black magic the Palace might come up with next.Meanwhile, check off "Murder, My Sweet" as a sure cure for low blood pressure. This is the story of a private detective who would take a dollar from anyone, with no questions asked. Phillip Marlowe is just a shade above his clients, who might be politely called questionable characters. He is not a particularly shrewd operator as Dick Powell draws him, but he has a persistence and capacity for taking a beating that is downright admirable. This is a new type of character for Mr. Powell. And while he may lack the steely coldness and cynicism of a Humphrey Bogart, Mr. Powell need not offer any apologies. He has definitely stepped out of the song-and-dance, pretty-boy league with this performance."Murder, My Sweet" sticks fairly close to its source—the Raymond Chandler novel, "Farewell, My Lovely," about a private "dick" who sets out to find a missing feminine link in the life of a stir-happy brute and is drawn into a complex web of murder, blackmail and double-dealing revolving around a missing jade necklace. Whole passages of Mr. Chandler's pungent sardonic dialogue were preserved by John Paxton, the script writer, and Edward Dmytryk's direction maintains the racy pace of the novel. The ending has been altered, but not the spirit. As in the case of "Double Indemnity," the Hays office has literally let the feminine protagonist, a malevolent blonde, played revealingly and suggestively by Claire Trevor, get away with murder.Practically all of the supporting roles are exceptionally well played, particularly by Mike Mazurki, the former wrestler, as the brutish Moose Malloy; Otto Kruger as Jules Amthor, quack-psychologist and insidious blackmailer; Anne Shirley as an innocent among the wolf pack, and Don Douglas as the police lieutenant. In short, "Murder, My Sweet" is pulse-quickening entertainment.Also on the Palace program is "On Guard," an inspiring two-reel record of the activities of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in combating enemy espionage and sabotage. J. Edgar Hoover, FBI director, appears in a foreword. The film contains what now seem to be incredible sequences of Nazis boldly parading in uniform at Bund camps here and of the Madison Square Garden rally. The subject, a chapter in RKO's "This Is America" series, also shows the films which the FBI made of Frederick Joubert Duquesne, Nazi spy leader, and Jap agents operating in this country.

At the PalaceMURDER, MY SWEET; screen play by John Paxton; based on the novel "Farewell, My Lovely," by Raymond Chandler; directed by Edward Dmytryk; produced by Adrian Scott for RKO-Radio Pictures.Phillip Marlowe . . . . . Dick PowellMrs. Grayle . . . . . Claire TrevorAnn Grayle . . . . . Anne ShirleyAmthor . . . . . Otto KrugerMoose Malloy . . . . . Mike MazurkiMr. Grayle . . . . . Miles ManderMarriott . . . . . Douglas WaltonLieut. Randall . . . . . Don DouglasDr. Sonderberg . . . . . Ralf HaroldeMrs. Florian . . . . . Esther Howard