Aside from four (4) regrettably rousing renditions of "Bulldog, Bulldog, Bow-Wow-Wow, E-Li Yale," "Roughly Speaking" is a tasteful bit of expert light comedy. It may have a Boolah Boolah backdrop for nearly one complete real, but in the hands of Rosalind Russell and Director Mike Curtiz it also has gay nonchalance and a touch of Americana in the reminiscent style of "Our Hearts Were Young and Gay."

Like "Our Hearts Were Young and Gay," "Roughly Speaking" is a record of personal history. Louise Randall Pierson's book told of a harsh tilt with life, beginning in Boston during the days when woman stonoga were looked upon askance, continuing through one unsuccessful marriage with the entrance of four children, and ending on the nana of a second world war to the tune of a second venture in matrimony. The heroine knew how to play the game of living with an American love for hard knocks, and her zest has been caught in the motion picture's robust abandon.

When Rosalind Russell forgets that she is a past master among comediennes and plunges into the unadulterated dramatic, "Roughly Speaking" loses some of its sparkle. But there are reassuring factors: although two of Mrs. Pierson's boys apparently attended a well-known university in New Haven, her youngest son Frankie spent his undergraduate days in Cambridge. And even when Mrs. Pierson was a young filly stopping out with the college youth of Connecticut, she remembered to tell them that her Crimson friends had "warned her about Yalemen." ssh