Exhibitors Herald World (Jan-Mar 1929)

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56 EXHIBITORS HERALD-WORLD March 30, 1929 SERVICE TALKS Incorporated in this department of Exhibitors Herald, which is a department containing news, information and gossip on current productions, is the Moving Picture World department, "Through the Box Office Window." "THE IRON MASK" I WISH I were so sure of tomorrow's mood and next month's rent as I always am of a Fairbanks picture. He doesn't miss. So sure have I become of him that, last week, I broke an ancestral tradition on his account. It happened thus: I write, you see, under another name, for another magazine. I had planned to write of "The Iron Mask" in the issue that went to press the morning after Mr. Fairbanks' picture was to be shown at an exclusive preview in Chicago. I went to the preview, the host had carelessly sold tickets to it and his gaily uniformed and uninformed doormen told me to line up with the mere payees and await my turn, whereat I returned blithely to the office and wrote of the picture just as though I'd seen it — incidentally saving myself two hours' sleep on the night. And, of course, I said just about the same things I'd have said had I been writing, as I am now, after seeing the picture. Perhaps I lacked something in knowledge of what it was all about, and certainly my typewriter imparted little of the enthusiasm I would have felt had I seen the picture a few minutes before writing, but the point is that I was quite secure in my praise of the picture and knew that I was. No one but Fairsbanks is like that. I should dare the adventure with no other man's picture. "The Iron Mask" is a story based on two other stories and it takes liberties with both. And Fairbanks takes liberties as usual with everything and everybody in sight. He reassembles the three musketeers, makes history turn flipflops, duels more people than there are duelists in the civilized world and adds his inevitable personal touch at the finish by calling the end "The Beginning." If he had not already made a great picture, this touch would have been worth the admission price. But the picture is great, and the touch is a crowning gesture. I suppose you'll want to know how much Doug talks in the picture. Well, if no one has told you before, he appears on a stage set in a couple of spots and recites briefly. I know, personally, that he can speak a great deal better than he does in these bits. But he speaks well enough. He has made no attempt to represent the picture as a talkie. I think he'll make one of those, and if he doesn't I'll take back all the good things I've ever said about him and t-ay a few of the other kind, hut for the present there is no need of it. "The Iron Mask" is approximately perfect as it is. By T. O. Service "THE GHOST TALKS" A JT\ NUMBER of young people employed by Fox have a lot of good fun with and in "The Ghost Talks." The title, incidentally, is not particularly important in connection with the picture. The story is one about a boy detective who dips into a bond robbery and has a great deal of somewhat humorous adventure before it's all over. The picture is the third or fourth of those utilizing the mystery racket as a means to the accomplishment of humor. The instrument is not always wieldy but Fox directors seem to have the hang of it. There is good fun in the thing, therefore, and the plot doesn't become suddenly serious at untimely junctures. The picture is, too, the third or fourth I've seen lately that employs colored actors intelligently. I think there's a future for this sort of thing. The big boy in "The Ghost Talks" has all it takes to be a star in his field. "ON TRIAL" I REMEMBER, a good many years ago, the sensation that went abroad when "On Trial" appeared as a stage play. Here was something new, novel, swift, dramatic, snappy. The scenes were cunningly shifted to give the illusion of cutback. The stage play ran a long time and became a sort of mile post. Lots of people tried to make something like it. Some even succeeded. In audien form, "On Trial" shows a little more clearly than any other picture I've seen the advantages of the new medium. The sequence of the thing is about as it was in the original, if my memory's any good, but the effectiveness of the scheme is far greater. There is no creaking mechanical device to go askew at the wrong moment. There is no waiting for this or that. There is swift realism, smooth shifting of time, consumate matching of incident. In case you don't remember the original plan of the play, this is it. A murder trial is in progress. Witnesses called to the stand tell their stories. As each speaks, the scene changes to the place of their testimony and action described is shown. Thus the related incidents are woven together in a constantly clarified pattern until the whole is complete with a suddenness that startles. It is a great little scheme. It works out in film much better than it did on the stage. Bert Lytell, Pauline Frederick, Lois Wilson and a little girl whose name got away from me are the principals. Holmes Herbert, if I haven't confused the name, is the fourth important member of the cast, and Richard Tucker is the prosecuting attorney. There are a good many others who speak — in fact, everybody speaks more or less — and the clerk of the court, who swears in the witnesses, should have his name more prominently placed in the cast. 'WHY BE GOOD?" I SHOULD like to take Colleen Moore and John McCormick to an exhibition of "Why Be Good?" in Chicago. I should like to see Miss Moore's eyes snap as she beheld the liberties the local censors have taken with her nice little picture. I should like to record Mr. McCormick's illuminating references to censors in general and these in particular. For the girls and boys of the censor department in this grave, upright community have sheared not wisely but with devasting effect. A thing like this always makes me mad. Here was a nice little picture with the nicest little star of them all in it and lots and lots of snappy subtitles for the boys and girls who like that sort of thing. It was a swift, clever little yarn about a girl who tried to hide a virtue for which the market value seemed to be down. It was merrily told, with many a gay commentary on the sophistications of today's young impossible, and it unquestionably carried more soul-saving power than all the censors in all the world. But the censors, of course, are beyond salvation. And so they looked long and blindly upon the tinseled sin of the dance hall depicted and put their scissors into play. Of course things like this have happened before, to Miss Moore's pictures as well as others, but this time the censors were handicapped by a well cued musical score which, naturally enough, didn't go so well with the print after the clipping process. And so what, I ask you, was done to correct the break in accompaniment? I doubt if you'd guess. Nobody but a censor would. Well, if ten feet were clipped from a given scene, throwing the accompaniment ten feet out of gear, then ten feet of action was repeated, bringing back the synchronization if that's the word. Isn't that a nice hot idea? You should see the picture. Yet not even a board of censors can wreck a Colleen Moore picture completely.