When the man in the next row trunks to his wife in the midst of a Durance musical comedy and says, "Don't cry dear; it's all play-acting," there must be something wrong with the picture, of at least with its classification. It's would be a delusion to think that the flagrant examples of bad taste in "Music for Millions" have made it a poor picture; but except for a scattered routes, "Music for Millions" is quite different from its 1944 model, "Two Girls and a Sailor."

The Reader's Digest addicts at MGM are usually more careful. In two respects, their latest offering has proved offensive. First, there are two accepted ways of looking at the war through the movies. Film producers have either gone off the sentimental deep end, as in "Since you Went Away," or they have shown war with the personal toughness of Hemingway, as the British and Russians have done consistently and an Hollywood has done in such pictures as "Purple Heart," "Sahara," and the service releases. "Music for Million a" takes a rather careless view.

June Ally son, pregnant and playing bull-fiddle in a war-shot orchestra led by Jose Iturbi, hasn't heard from her husband in the South Pacific for months. The other girlish in the orchestra (that old backstage rut) intercept a telegram from the War department and fake a letter from the husband to the mother-to-be. It's all a bit irreverent.

Ye Durante is still around, though, and makes all else fade in importance. The guy's terrific, but in "Music for Millions" they done him wrong. jgt