ALWAYS IN MY HEART

New Zealand Listener, Volume 8, Issue 208, 18 June 1943, Page 13

ALWAYS IN MY HEART

(Warner Bros.)

AYBE Universal have found a_= gold-mine_ in their new young star, Diana Barrymore; so let’s suggest that Warner Bros. have found

something just as good, perhaps bettera rubber plantation. Or did Warner Bros. not "find" Gloria Warren? Did she, as the advertisements for Always in My Heart seemed to suggest, "find’’ Warner Bros.? Or is the finding mutual? I expect we'll be able to decide, round about her film after the next. In the meantime -we’re happy to sit down and listen to a very sweet voice, to watch a charming and joyous face, as Gloria Warren fifteen, brunette, oval-faced, and lively introduces herself. It seems that Kay Francis has had to resign herself to being a mother to young screen stars in their "teens; the other week it was Diana Barrymore, this week it’s Gloria Warren-who will it be next week? Well, never mind, I much prefer to see her that way (if I have to see her at all). Always in My Heart is the name of a song written in-prison by Walter Huston; he’s a musician; years ago he went to prison for a crime he didn’t commit; and to save the children from the disgrace there was a divorce and Kay Francis bravely brought up her son and daughter believing that their father was long-dead -quite a useful belief when it came to the time that a wealthy suitor for their mother appeared with presents of speedboats, cars, new pianos, small white fluffy dogs, and what will you. We, the audience, walk in to their lives just as Kay Francis decides to marry the man and goes to the gaol to tell the father. But we know something that she doesn’t know; we know that the.father has just received his pardon. So we also know

what a noble thing he does when he tells her to go ahead, marry the man, for the sake of the children. Well, the father is pardoned. And, of course, he can’t resist going home just to stand quietly on the street corner to have a look at the children. After that, of course, he'll go quietly away and they’ll never know. But . . . his daughter has a Voice; he is a Musician ... and besides, he would like to work among the musical people of fish-town, in the poor district far away from his children’s home on the other side of the town. Besides, the daughter brings her Voice there sometimes and sings with the fisher-folk (Borah Minnevitch with his amusing mouth-organ and all his dancing, prancing raggedy boys with their tin-whistles and their mouth-organs). So you see how it works out. Which is all very satisfactory for everyone-except the wealthy suitor; but then, of course, he still has Lots of Money. Well, next time Gloria Warren is billed I’ll be an interested member of the audience.