The Moviegoer

Review week at the University Theater consists of exhuming eight movies that might just as well have remained in their graves. Though they were all successful pictures, only one, "The Green Years," struggles along a little above mediocrity. Evenly divided between long, sentimental sagas and standard musicals, this is a sad review of the motion pictures in the last few years.

"The Green Years," today's offering, is A. J. Cronin's sentimental tale of the life of a Scottish boy who is hampered by poverty, a mean old grandfather, and a foolish old great-grandfather. Some splendid acting by Hume Cronyn and Charles Coburn help a lot, though no alchemist's miracle is achieved.

If you'd like to see Greer Garson as a Western lass who makes good in Jim Fiskish New York and marries a dullish robber baron, you can go to "Mrs. Parkington," but you'll also have to see her finish up as a rather pitiful eighty-year-old matriarch. That is no fun, even if you like Greer Garson.

In "Thrill of a Romance," playing on Friday, you get the formula musical, dull, plush, and empty. The main attractions here are Lauritz Melchior singing "Vesti la Giubba" in the lobby of a slick Western hotel, Esther Williams in some submarine contortions, and Van Johnson as his usual creamy self.

Undaunted, the U.T. is following up with two more musicals on Saturday. In "Meet Me in St. Louis," Judy Garland sings the Trolley Song and is dewy-eyed with not-so-bad results. "The Three Caballcros" shows Walt Disney as a good neighbor and a bad movie producer. There's some fine music, but that was already tiresome a year age.