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Show il 1 1 .-jsygsrrfl -i Notes of an Innocent Bystander: The Magic Lanterns: Alfred Hitchcock's Hitch-cock's latest, "Shadow of a Doubt," is one of the most exciting melodra-masterpieces melodra-masterpieces . . . Nobody on the stage or screen is a better actress than little Margaret O'Brien. Most aren't as good. She tears the heart out of your throat in "Journey for Margaret," and in a patriotic short, starring J. Cagney, Margaret delivers deliv-ers The Gettysburg Address better, perhaps, than Lincoln himself . . . The March of Time's "We Are the Marines" is the first release from that group that seemed dull . . . Real marines in action at the front, too, but the actors in "Commandos Strike at Dawn" took your breath away with their phony war ... In that film Lillian Gish's bit-playing didn't hold me, at all ... I kept thinking: "Here she is appearing in a propaganda propa-ganda picture, although she attacked war a year ago, by accusing Hollywood Holly-wood of 'forcing' her into a film in 1917 to arouse hatred, etc." . . . "China Girl" is only entertainment when audiences kid it. The Coast-to-Coasters: The big query in Brazil: "Why did your country stop letting us hear Lowell Thomas now and then?" . . . Please send that item to Mr. Nelson Rockefeller's Rocke-feller's Inter-American Committee, Washington, and help cement relations rela-tions with South America . . . Joe Besser's interruptions on Jack Benny's Ben-ny's show are the .most amusing gags in a long time . . . The endless interruptions on Infopleea ("The best tunes of all go to Carnegie Hall!") must have robbed that attraction of many listeners. Most irritating. And so you remedy matters by simply sim-ply dialing to another program . . . George Denny's "Town Hall Meeting of the Air" remains a radio must . . . The claims here and there that certain cer-tain radio news commentators "have the largest audience in the U. S." were debunked by the radio page in the current issue of Time, which lists the "first ten programs," and names only one reporter. The Intelligentsia: "The Sergeant Says," a first effort by Sgt. James Cannon of Fort Dix and PM, is crowded with first-rate wordage which is hardly news to all of us who said he could write long ago . . . "Guadalcanal Diary," (Random House) by Richard Tregaskis of Int'l News, is the Feb. Book-of-the-Month a literary monument to American heroism . . Another first effort is "The Listeners," a novel by Lt. Herbert Her-bert Whiting (Appleton-Century). Critics predict a public for it . . . Reporter Robert Casey's "Torpedo Junction" (we just caught up with it) is a Bobbs-Merrill corker. The Magazines: The cunning and moxie of the Hitler haters inside the Reich are reported in "Spy at Work" in The Atlantic. Jon B. Jansen and Stefan Weyl thrill you with the adroit hoodwinkings. The stunt becomes all the more admirable admir-able when you know they operated with hardly any money . . . This Week introduces the guy who did most to make a monkey out of Goeb-bels Goeb-bels (excepting Nature, who made him look like one). He is, according to Curt Reiss, the Soviet propagandists' propagan-dists' Lozovsky. His hooting on the Berlin newscastings choked lies in Nazi gullets, and his pamphleteering has caused Hitler to double his carpet car-pet devourings . . . Theatre Arts Monthly cites Katharine Cornell's tribute to Thornton Wilder. His translation of "Lucrece," in which she flopped, is described by Miss C. as "my favorite failure" . . . Rollin Kirby's cartoon page in Look should be pasted in every shop window in the U. S. to remind gripers to jump from the tailed skyscraper. Kirby's Is the best pusff-in-the-f a ce yet. The Front Pages: Alexander Woollcott's typewriter used to bite people, but it never showed as many fangs as the one that delivered the obit on him for the H.-Trib. The piece lifted eyebrows all over town, so unsparing was it. Probably would have got plaudits from the victim who hated drooling pollyanna fakery . . . The day after Benito's empire died In Tripoli, the Italian rags started start-ed giving him sass. One Milan gazette ga-zette spat in his eye. That's how it goes with losers. Old Baldy couldn't get a worse punishment than hoots from the crowds who once "vive'd" his balcony hamming . . . Mostly you agree with Walter Duranty, but not when, in a mag piece, he calls himself a second rate reporter. They don't come any flrster . . . Walter Kerr filed some paragraphs to the Reid family's paper as "a Moscow gossip column." If he wants a title for it, how about "Sovietcetra"? Quotation Mnrks-mansblp: Rupert Hughes: Her face was her chape-rone chape-rone . . . Faith Baldwin: She was torn between love and booty . . . Anon: When you talk, you only say something you know. When you listen, lis-ten, you learn whut someone elsp knows . . . F. O. Repploer: She sat up like an exclamation point . . . W. L. McElvaney: The whispered goodby of one to never see again . . . John Kennedy: A military export ex-port Is one who tells you what Is going go-ing to hnppcn tomorrow und Uier tells you why it didn't. |