When Stirling Hayden and his body arrived in Hollywood, many skeptics said that the mere fact that he was a nautical fellow, and very good-looking, did not necessarily imply that he would make a good actor. These skeptics were answered by the realists, who said that the mere fact that he might not be a good actor did not necessarily imply that he would be a failure in Hollywood. Now both of these arguments were based on rational grounds, but the realist school of thought failed to take one factor into consideration--just how bad Mr. Hayden's acting actually was. It is not bad in the conventional Hollywood sense; it sinks. And consequently Mr. Hayden, handsome or no, body or no, is a failure, as is his latest and last picture, "Bahama Passage."

The movie is a slow-going, vulgarly conceived, and poorly executed melodrama about love in the tropics, with all the usual background of palm-trees, native uprisings, dishonest fellows, and virile torsos. In the end, of course, Love and Honesty are triumphantly rampant on a field of Caribbean blue. The only good things about the picture are madeleine Carroll and the Glorious Technicolor. An actress as charming and demure as Miss Carroll was certainly meant for better things than "Bahama Passage."

The other picture, "The Night of January the 16th," is a first-rate murder-adventure story about a girl (Ellen Drew) who comes dangerously near being convicted of a murder which, needless to say, she didn't commit. Robert Preston, who manages to clear her of the charge, is his usual dashing self. Included in the plot are many amusing situations, and the picture, unlike "Bahama Passage," moves along at a good rate. On the whole, it's by far the better of the two.