"Casanova Brown"

With an adeptness rivaling that of Preston Sturges, script-writer Nunnally Johnson has teamed Gary Cooper and Teresa Wright in a fast-moving comedy of briedgrooms-almost-to-be and little-babies-by-former-wives, teeming itself, with mysterious notes from Chicago Maternity Hospitals and half-hour engagements to hotel chamber maids.

Arriving in a railroad station in Rossmore, Illinois, after a trip to New York to sell a historical book about his famous ancestor, Cooper, as Cas Q. Brown, is met with a big kiss and a case of the sniffles by Anita Louise, his one-and-only-at-the-time. A few quick scenes take care of talks with poppa, profligatish Frank Morgan at his usual best, and preliminary preparations for the wedding. Comes the day of the wedding rehearsal, comes a letter from the Ellen Harris Maternity Hospital suggesting immediate consultations, comes a big headache for Cooper.

A well done flash-back puts Cooper into a $750,000 New York house and lands Sagittarius right in the middle of the fifth house of Jupiter. With the stars and Teresa Wright--Isabel Drury's mother against him, the house goes up in smoke, and Cooper's spur of the moment marriage with Isabel, a Barnard girl, ends on the proverbial rocks. The flashback fades, and Morgan-Cooper banter lights up the scene to dispel the otherwise shady atmosphere of the proceedings. Cas, with a slightly overworked conscience, takes a powder to Chicago on general principles to look the situation over.

The drums go bang, the cymbald clang, Cas is a father, he breaks one engagement and makes two, abducts his own child, and relaxes his Dr. Wassell expression to play nursemaid to his daughter in a cheap hotel room. As in all comedy everybody lives happily with a capital slap.

"Mademoiselle Fill"--Simone Simon--also ran. rkh.