ANOTHER PAMELA

A slightly buriesquad projection of the Pamela theme to a modern setting- a California ranch estate, presided over by an eccentric multi-millionaire, a lady devoted to good works and radical schemes. She picks her "Pamela" out of a tar-paper roofed novel in the country, where her big limousine chances to break down. She takes her along as parlor maid, because as a Seventh Day Adventist, Pamela will work on Sunday, when the rest of the staff want the day off. And she expects Pamela to help keep her good-for-nothing, spoiled nephew off liquor and women. In letters to her mother (sedate, maidenly letters) and to her sister (a bit more romance here), Pamela tells the story of Charles' attempted education, and in turn her persistent avowal of a religious basis of life as the only way she or he can live. In the end, she wins- but not before she has been promoted to secretary, has been wooed by a young poet and a Wobbly serving a jail sentence. Charles promises all she asks, and the story ends in their marriage.... An intentionally naive pandering to the servant girl to riches, with morals intact, craving of what the publishers may feel is mass public. We wonder whether even the fatal charm of the creator of Lanny Budd can entrap the American public with a story of the rewards of virtue. To be sure, the sophisticate can read between the lines a tongue in cheek arraignment of the lives of those to whom riches mean lure for cranks. A crazy world seen through untutored eyes.