The Terre Haute Tribune from Terre Haute, Indiana • Page 31

SECTION 3 ROBERT CUMMINGS, MARIE DRIVE IN Thundering conflict erupts from the screen of the Grand where Technicolor adventure ms Across the River opens today. A stirring tale of renegades and Indian revolt in the Colorado territory, the picture literally explodes dramatic dynamite from start to finish. It is a hard-riding, fast-shooting Audie Murphy who becomes the center of the dangerous crosscurrents that motivate Across the His own father, Walter Brennan, mistrusts the bitterness he knows Audie bears for all Indians. Even Lisa Gaye, his sweetheart, must "believe in him blindly while the town turns its hate on him. And Lyle Bettger, lusting for plunder and power, uses Audie to provoke war with the Utes by inveigling him into leading a wagon train into the forbidden San Juan Mountains.

And once the fuse is lit, Audie has all he can do to root cut the traitors and renew peaceful relations with Jay Silverheels and his warriors. Top Cast. Murphy is at once determined, stubborn and ready to trade his hatred for for a considerable change of pace in his approach to the part of Gary Brannon. Lisa Gaye, in her first starring role, is lovely to look at and shows great promise. Bettger and Brennan, two of the most reliable actors, give Audie his best starring support to date.

The action scenes are filled with an unusual amount of tension, the best of which depict the invaders being pinned down at their wagons by withering Ute gunfire and march to the gallows, an execution that just miss! es coming off. And some of the I best close-action combat will be seen in Across the charging in for hand-to-hand clashes with Hugh a consummate villain. Others cast in strong support are shapely Mara Corday as girl-friend, Silverheels as the resolute Taos, Regis Toomey as the justice-seeking Sheriff and Morris Ankrum as the old Ute Chief. Nathan direction maintains the atmosphere of danger in every scene and Melville production brings to the screen some very colorful new mountain location backgrounds. The star-powered CinemaScope adventure film.

of now playing at the Indiana ter. has the magnetic, nearly hypnotic quality suggested by its title carried throughout by its taut drama. Gary Cooper. Susan Hayward and Richard Widmark co-star with Hugh Marlowe, Cameron Mitchell, Rita Moreno and Victor Manuel Mendota carrying the main action of the top-budgeted Technicolor production. The setting is Mexico.

The CinemaScope camera again displays in spectacular fashion its superiority as a medium to capture scenery. The panoramic lens sweeps across the Mexican jungles, deserts, volcanic mountains and ancient villages with a clarity and artistry that could stampede the tourist into a frenzied visit. The camera glides through the brush of banana tree jungles, wanders through age-old deserted villages and tracks the awesome black volcanic sands around Parieutin mountain which erupted devastatingly ll years ago. The director, Henry Hathaway, has uncannily worked strangely beautiful backgrounds into the plot to establish, maintain and climax the atmosphere for the suspense of the story. Depicts Gay Era.

Frank screen play, built from a story by Fred Freiberger and William Tunberg, is set in 1850 and is about three soldiers of fortune (Cooper. Widmark and Mitchell) who meet in the bar of a little Mexican sea- Continued On Page 32, Column 4. JAMES ARNESS, JOAN WALTER BRENNAN, AUDIE MURPHY-GRAND JOEL MCCREA TERRE HAUTE DRIVE IN JOAN WELDON CORRAL DRIVE-IN As pleasant an evening at the movies as anyone could seek is to be found at the Eastside Drive- In Theater where Me with Marie Wilson and Robert Cummings in the co-starring roles, began an engagement yesterday. Producer Alex Gottlieb and Director Frank Tashlin have come up with an amusing basis for a screen comedy and have de- veloped it with considerable fresh- ness of treatment. From all indi- cations it was hand-tailored to the undeniable talents of the two stars.

Fans who have enjoyed Marie Wilson on the screen and as My Friend Irma in TV and on the radio and Robert Cummings as Mr. Beanblossom as well as in his many screen roles, will find Me especially to their liking. Cummings is a jet pilot recalled to active duty in Korea just as he and his sweetheart, Marie, are about to take their wedding vows. They decide to hold up their He returns to receive a welcome during w-hich he proudly states that he intends th resume his job and support Marie on its modest salary. When Marie unexpectedly inherits a million dollars his pride causes him to refuse to marry her.

Before they finally reach the altar, unscrupulous I lawyers, gangsters, a pretty WAC and a psychiatrist become in- solved in the highly hilarious proceedings. Robert Cummings and Marie Wilson contribute excellent comedy performances and are surrounded by a top-drawer cast in which Ray Walker, Mary Costa, Jess Barker, Lloyd Corrigan, June I Vincent, Richard Gaines and Moroni Olsen stand out. Director Frank Tashlin, who has been associated as writer and director on many of the better Bing Crosby and Bob Hope comedies, keeps things moving at rapid pace throughout Me is credited as an Alex Gottlieb production and is being distributed by REO Radio Pictures. The Other Picture. Warner motion picture shocker of giant creatures spawned in the desert of the southwest, will open at the East- 1 side Drive-In theater.

James Whitmore, Edmund Gwenn, Jean Weldon and James Arnes star in i the Warner Bros. film. I The science-fiction thriller involves mysterious killings on the Mojave Desert resulting in a governmental investigation. A scientist, played by Edmund Gwenn, discovers that the gruesome monsters responsible for the devastation were the result of the lingering radiation of an atomic burst. The measures taken to wipe out the horde of creatures, which is soon threatening a major metropolis, make up a major part of the action of the film story.

The cast finds James Whitmore in the role of a rugged State Police trooper who first discovers A graduate of the Broadway stage, where he won the Donaldson Award for his outstanding performance in Continued On Page 32 Column 2. SCENE FROM new offering starring (lark Gable and Ava Gardner on the Idaho screen, has everything a moviegoer could wish for in the way of romance, thrill-packed adventure and derous backgrounds of the fauna and flora of Africa filmed in Technicolor. This drama of an expedition leader who becomes involved in a triangular romance ith an American show girl and the wife of an English anthropologist who accompany him on a safari through the gorilla country was filmed on a four-month location trip through 10,000 miles of territory in East Africa and French Equatorial Africa, much of it never photographed before. Ik scenes of native ceremonies and uprisings, an encounter with a maddened rhinoceros and the climactic episode of the perilous gorilla hunt supplement the emotional tension of the riot situation to create an African drama even more and breathtaking than the successful Mines Gable plays Vie Mars well, who finds a charge of dynamite laid on the doorstep (actually, in the shower of his African jungle compound in the person of jaunty, slangy show girl "Honey Kelly (Ava Gardner). The latter is brought down to earth and subsequently into Vie arms when she learns she has stood un by the maharajah she has come to meet.

I ne impetuous romance is brought to an abrupt end, however, when lovely Nord ley. wife of the British anthropologist. Donald Nordley, plans to accompany her husband on a safari to be led by Vie. Circumstances force Honey Bear to become a member of the safari as well, and the resulting fireworks between the two girls, of whom have become infatuated with Vie, are almost as dangerous as safari counter with hostile and jungle beasts. The action leads up to the thrilling climax in which the safari engages a giant gorilla hunt, with native pygmies armed with spears and nets.

Vie saves hus- onunued On Page 32, Column 6. MANUEL MENDOZA, GARY "Texas Ranger" and Convicted Are State Theaters Attractions.