Evening star., 1940-06-08

warmly human portrait OF MIN ana
Mr.. Brown has managed to make
the whole story more than a little
dramatic. This has not been easy.
This portion of Edison's career was
not a dramatic one, so far as pur-
poses of the cinema are concerned.
After a varied assortment of youth
full adventures his life seems to
have been. according to biographers
previous to M-G-M, a steady pro-
gression Of success as his genius
attacked one problem after another.
AS truly great man as Edison
was, as truly important as were
the contributions of his mind and
industry to the progress of our
civilization, the story of his life, as
he lived 1t, is hardly colorful ma
terlal for retelling by this zone of
his inventions, the motion picture
which talks. Still his story is one
to which you are likely to be glad
to listen, so we perhaps should
thank the script writer's and the
director for the little fictions to
which they have resorted.
In so doing they have endowed
Edison, the Man" with ever mount
ing dramatic interest, always the
quiet kind of drama, but drama
nevertheless. There are some mo-
ments which make your heart fill
up-that one, for instance, when the
inventor, quite by chance, makes the
discovery ultimately responsible for
your listening as we'll as watching
as Mr.. Tracy plays Edison, that the
human voice can be recorded That
first successful electric light is quite
a dramatic performer, too, and prob
ably the first actor ever to steal a
scene from Spencer Tracy.
That these inventions may have
been born in circumstances not ex-
actly those reported here is not of
too much consequence. This is one
of those biographical films of that
genre governed by the belief that
the man himself is the important
thing in film story of a great man S
life. that integrity to character is as
complete as honesty need be- "Edi-
son. the Man" is what the title says
rather than biography.
And certainly Spencer Tracy gives
us the Thomas Edison We all re-
member even to the point of re-
sembling him remarkably. The re-
semblance, of course. is much more
than external. Mr.. Tracy being an
actor who can show us the sort of
man man is, who can here show
all of Edison's keenness. his tenacity,
the stern cover to his kindness,
who can let us know Edison a little
better, perhaps.
Mr.. Tracy, of course. has a sup
porting cast. Early there is bit
of romance, settling down to COM
Portable domesticity, involving in
each case Miss Rita Johnson. VAL
famous fnanciers. benevolent fnan-
ciers, friends and assistants at
the Menlo Park laboratory are
about, too, in the persons of Gene
Lockhart, Charles Coburn, Lynne
Overman, Felix Bressart, Henry
Travers and others.
X
An antidote for the dignity of it's
motion picture attraction is the
Capitol's stage show. The closest
thing to dignity attained by the
stage show is the dancing of Dixie
nunhar tho trim, lift1e locc o,,+ IF
Life Begins at $40 who for some
time was considered a motion pic-
ture star by Goth Century-Fox. and
Miss Dunbars dancing is not digni-
fed. 1t is rhythmic, though, and
certainly pleasure to watch.
Opening with an undersea ballet
about an acrobatic mermaid who
wasn't allowed to swim, the revue
travels all the way from the very