VARIETY
493
tender slow pan shot of the Prin–
ceton campus, until Wilson leaves
the·White House, its hero is rushed
about to football and baseball
games (episodes which perform
the double duty of establishing
Wilson as a not untypical Amer–
ican lover of sport, and giving the
band a chance to play good and
loud), to a variety theatre (where
some more music can be dragged
in and where Wilson's reactions
to Lew Dockstader and Eddie Foy
point up his zest for the theatre),
and to such Sousa-havens as poli–
tical rallies.
Somewhere around Reel Nine,
Wilson
settles down to (a) convinc–
ing its audience of the nobility of
America's aims in fighting World
War I , (b) absolving the Amer–
ican people of guilt in the League
of Nations fight, and (c) convert–
ing that tragic affair into a matter
of personalities, with Wilson as
messiah and Henry Cabot Lodge as
villain. Such a significant figure in
Wilson's life as Colonel House is
seen so briefly that if your eyes
leave the screen for a moment, you
are apt to miss him entirely. Most
of the other historical figures dart
on and off with the speed of water–
bugs. Wilson's own chilly, com–
plex, eccentric, theological-semi–
nary characteristics are scrapped
for more genial and photogenic
ones; he becomes a family man
who occasionally has to pay a visit
to the office to straighten out a few
business matters. As for what was
responsible for the economic and
political nightmare of the period
1914-1920, there is only one
8X–
planation: Germany.
WELDON KEEs
DOUBLEDAY, DORAN
announces the
26th Anniversary
Edition
of the
0. HENRY
MEMORIAL
AWARD
PRI ZE STORIES
OF1944
Selected and Edited by
Herschel Brickell
Assisted by
MURIEL FULLER
HERE is the cream of shorter fiction
published this year-selected by the
famous critic and former literary
editor of the
New York Evening Post.
This edition contains a timely intro–
duction by Mr. Brickell along with
pithy biographical sketches of the
authors; and includes a list of those
American magazines which were con–
sulted in choosing the stories.
Includes Stories by
Griffith Beems
'Bessie Brever
Walter van
Tilburg Clark
Elizabeth Eastman
Morton Fineman
Berry Fleming
Marjorie Hope
Josephine W .
Johnson
Ruth Adams Knight
George Loveridge
Margaret ·Osborn
J . F. Powers
Marianne Roane
Gladys Schmi'tt
Mark Schorer
Irwin Shaw
Alison Stuart
E. M. Violett
Christine Weston
Wendell Wilcox
Frank Yerby
Marguerite Young
At your bookseller's
$2.50
DouBLEDAY,
DoRAN
