Far better than any guide-book to the American dance is the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers pictorial view of fox trots, rhumbas, slides and glides in the "Story of Vernon and Irene Castle." Unfortunately, the picture offers little else. During Vernon's early slapstick days--his barber shop scene with Lew Fields, his gaudy, striped coats that are liable to start a national trend, his old-fashioned romance with Irene Foote--the picture proceeds at a light and entertaining pace. The mood of pre-war gaiety and Sunday excursions to the beach at New Rochelle is, made delightfully real. But once Vernon and Irene are happily married, the sad curse of a story without "boy seeks girl" throws the picture into dreariness. To recapture some trace of excitement, the standby for heart-three--the World War--is sensationally exploited and used especially to play on the audience's martial sympathy Vernon's tragic death in an aeroplane clash is sentimentalized to the point of insincerity. Ginger Rugers is perfect on the dance floor; in tears she is just another girl. The real entertainment of the movie is the dancing, which makes it an attractive but not a worthy successor to past Astaire Rogers magniflickioes: The sad truth remains: even the best of screen romancers turn almost dull after marriage.

Outside of typical Grade B weakness, "The Hound of the Baskervilles" rates a passing grade as a mystery thriller. The horror of the bleak, English moors--which is almost becoming the screen character of His Majesty's isle--is well supported by the business-like Sherlock of Basil Rathbone and a very satisfying "elementary, my dear Watson" by Nigel Bruce.