A petulant stenographer's pout and a pair of plump small legs do not carry Nancy Carroll through as the bit of sweetening in "Manhattan Cocktail," the current cinema at the Metropolitan. This movie is shaken up from one of those left-on-the-doorstep scenarios that bring in everything but the fall of Babylon to prove that New York City is a great big mouse trap for boys and girls away from home. It has some cleve post-Ufa photography and a lot of heavy breathing around the hapless Miss Carroll to drum up interest but it's no use, no one's killed, and that blights the sole hope of the spectators.

Richard Arlen and the slant-eyed Lilyan Tashman are accessories to the fact in this particular piece of mayhem.

In between times, a Publix melange of girls and nonsense titled "Bubbles" beguiles the audience. The girls, however, slip up in their routine dances now and then, one of them actually took a heavy fall, and the song and patter men act somewhat nonplussed at being on the big time: Fannie Brice, America's leading comedienne (don't ask which direction) dashes on for 15 minutes and completes the bill in a manner inconvenient to describe.

Gene Rodemich and Charles Martel are back: that's about the best that can be said for the affair.