MORE TOUGH STUFF FROM MR. TAYLOR

Radio Record, Volume XIII, Issue 11, 21 August 1939, Page 16

MORE TOUGH STUFF FROM MR. TAYLOR

Sereen Idol Battered By Beery In "Stand Up And Fight" ... Meet Isa Miranda ... "Hell’s Angels" And "First World War" Roeaissued

["Stand Up and Fight." M.G.M. Directed by W. S. Van Dyke Il. Starring Robert Taylor, Wallace Beery and Florence Rice. Now showing in New Zealand.]

What We Say

JHE process of toughening up Robert Taylor proceeds apace. It started in ‘‘Yank at Oxford,’? and continued in "Roar of the Crowd’’ (in which, if I remember right, he wore a thick mat of hair on the chest, planted there hair by hair by M.G.M.’s _ efficient make-up department). It is carried on still further in ‘"‘Stand Up And Fight,’’ which transplants our hero to a post-Civil War setting of rough stage-coach men, contraband slaving, and primitive railroads. Mr. Taylor is a young Southern gentleman of impeccable accent, who. has lost his all, and, spurned for spinelessness by his sweetheart, fares forth to prove he is a man. Chief obstacle to all this is Wallace Beery, a hardened old sinner, who runs a declining stage-coach company. Taylor and Beery play out to the bitter end the two strong men who batter each other to a standstill and finally become everlasting friends. All Mr. Beery’s old mannerisms are there, including the earthquake which every now and then convulses his face. It is slickly and competently produced in the magnificent M.G.M. manner, and some of

the outdoor scenes are beautifully done in sepia. Florence Rice is the gal, and a good job of work is done by Charles Bickford as a rascally slave contrabander. I thing the general public, M.G.M. and everybody coneerned should be satisfied now that, given the chance, Robert Taylor can both act and he tough.-J.G.M.

New York Says

"oy JERE is new material vitally handled, and here is Wallace Beery at his very good best with a new and confidént Robert Taylor alongside. ‘‘Mr. LeRoy could have made a great picture out of the slaverunning trade alone. He could have made a great picture out of the competition (circa 1844) between the stage lines and the infant railroads, specifically the B. and O. **But he chose to use both of these subjects as construction materials in the making of a great picture about people, and he put all of the ‘right people in all of the right places before he started grinding, "‘The sereen play is a skilfully and delightfully wrought piece of material. It is as full of —

plot-twist as the first B. and O. roadbed was of bumps. ‘‘Impressive incidents are the races between stagecoach and train, brilliantly executed, the pursuit of an escaped slave, a gun battle in a snow-filled arroyo, a fox hunt at the start of the picture, and the fights between Taylor and Beery.’’