Scene the First: a bloodthirsty lady waiting in the stands for the decapitation of Anne Boleyn (that's Merle Oberon) says to the female in front of her, "Would you mind removing your hat, please?" From there on, it's deuces (and Queens) wild, with an intended or unintended laugh ever 7 1-2 seconds, and a chance to receive the most erroneous impression of a historical period that ever engraved upon celluloid. Scene the Second: in struts Charles Laughton as the marrying king, with some of the placid content of an enraged bull in a cow pasture. You won't have half as good a time as he's going to have in this piece, but don't let that worry your tiny heads; things are going to be all right once we get around to his third, or is it his fourth, little woman.

Towards the middle of the second reel, a few of the more interested members of the audience will discern a plot snuggling its way into the epic. It now appears that Robert Donat has been dancing altogether too many quadrilles with the queen, who is not incongruously impersonated by Binnie Barnes Donat, who happens to be playing an innocuous courtier named Cromwell, seems to have a prior claim, but after a few innocent bearhugs, he and Binnie go the way of all people Henry knew, and the latter, in the absence of a psychiatrist, marries again. But his spirit is broken; his chicken salad days are gone, and he ends up, of all things, henpecked by his last wife.

That seems to be the sum of this tale of sound and fury, and if it weren't written and acted by idiots, it would seem a lot more real, and a lot less fun. Scene the Best: Laughton, fawningly in love, tries to show wifey he's the strongest man in the kingdom, and takes on a wrestler, only to beat him, and then have to be carried away himself. Toughest problem of the picture: which is the more pathetic, Henry Tudor or Charles Laughton trying to be Henry Tudor? There are a couple of obstacles to be overcome. 1) Watching Laughton laugh, and 2) watching Laughton eat. However, some people may even enjoy the latter; at least some did when the picture first appeared in the Thirties. In the seenes that do not show 1) and 2), there's a fairly steady tailwind to keep you going