Pace Is Hot In "Professor, Beware"

Radio Record, 9 December 1938, Page 33

Pace Is Hot In "Professor, Beware"

(Professor, Beware." Paras mount. Directed by Elliott Nugent. Starring Harold Lioyd, with Phyllis Welch, Raymond Walburn, Lionel Stander, First release: Wellington, December 16-] IVE seript-writers collaborated with Harold Lloyd on his new comely ‘‘Professor, Beware,’’ but the result is authentically Lloyd. The bespectacled comedian remains true to first principles, to the technique which won him fame in the silent days of "Grandma’s Boy" and "Welcome Danger," One criticism I read of "ProfesSor, Beware" accused Lioyd of haying borrowed the cross-country _¢hase formula of "It Happened One Night." It might be more correct to say that "It Happened One Night" first borrowed the formula from Lioyd, who probably took it in turn from someone else. It would be hard to remember 4 Harold Lloyd comedy in which he hasn’t been violently pursued by misadventure through a variety of settings from the first reel ta the last. In "Professor, Beware," the chase begins in Los Angeles in Mn ener ew, eee

the first five minutes or so, continues right across the American continent, with hardly time to take breath, and employing almost every known variety of vehicle (except tanks); and it ends about an hour and a half later in New York with an amazing free-for-all fight on the docks. ;

Escape From Doom

GUPERIMPOSED ‘on the hectie action is the authentic Lloyd

wildered by all the trouble he unwittingly causes. Now he’s a professor of Egyptology in a Los Angeles museum obsessed with the idea that he and a girl he meeta are the reincarnations of illfated Egyptian lovers. Everything that happens serves to convince him that their experiences are the exact modern parallel of what happened thousands of years before, and that they are moving irresistibly toward a foreordainedand very unpleasant--doom, Desperately, our Harold strives to rid himself of the -leech-like attentions of the charming hero- |

ine, and so avoid his fate. Having succeeded, and antagonised her, he then just as desperately strives to win her back.

Nice New Heroine:

PARAMOUNT seem to have a happy knack of introducing attractive new heroines. Last week, in my review of "Sing, You Sinners," I mentioned Elien Drew. This week it is Phyllis Welch, who makes a pleasant, though embarrassing companion for Harold on his transcontinental journey. Playing a couple of tramps, Raymond Walburn and Lionel Stander (whose deep gruff voice is a joy to hear) join the hero in mid-pic-ture and add to the laughs. After a series of comedies in which talk is the main ingredient, it is refreshing to meet one in which slapdash action predominates. Inevitably, Lloyd must face the criticism from some quarters that his style of humour has dated, that many of his gags are hewhiskered. . &