The Film Daily (1918)

Sunday, July 14, 1918 AILY Kiddie Star Lost in Hackneyed Meller that Provides Little For Her to Do Baby Marie Osborne in "CUPID BY PROXY" Diando — Pathe DIRECTOR William Bertram AUTHOR Isabel Johnston SCENARIO BY Lela Leibrand AS A WHOLE Story misses fire and Baby Marie has very little to do. STORY Hackneyed plot that doesn't hang together; certainly not a vehicle for child star. DIRECTION Failed to make situations register or take advantage of the few opportunities offered to get cute kid stuff. PHOTOGRAPHY Very ordinary LIGHTINGS Just acceptable; no attempt for effects CAMERA WORK Noticeably bad in spots STAR Handicapped by direction and story SUPPORT Satisfactory. Sissy kid very good; Antrim Short acted natural. EXTERIORS Acceptable INTERIORS Satisfactory DETAIL Painfully convenient with many slips CHARACTER OF STORY Too much meller and too little of Marie. Won't satisfy because it never gets anywhere. LENGTH OF PRODUCTION 5,000 feet IF THE producers who are trying to put Baby Marie over as a star don't step out and get some real stories for her. that little lady's career in pictures will be very short-lived. Nearly every story that Baby Marie has had in the past has contained an unnecessary amount of meller which certainly doesn't belong in a kiddie picture but in her earlier efforts she at least had a director who knew how to inject cute little touches and natural kiddie tricks which offset the meller enough to make the production as a whole pleasing entertainment. This production utterly fails to get anywhere. The story is hackneyed, the meller is dragged in without rhyme or reason and worst of all, Baby Marie has not been given a single opportunity to register anything which might help offset the shortcomings of the production as a whole. Granting that pood kiddie stories are hard to find, it would certainly be sound business on Diando's part to step out and get at least one story that provides something for little Marie to do and which will really register as entertainment, than to simply figure on so many Baby pictures a year and not have any of them class as more than ordinary "movie." With child stars It is a case of "make hay while the sun shines," because soon Baby Marie will be "growed up" and then she will be out of the running entirely for a few years, at the end of which time, if she still shows promise as an ingenue, it will be necessary to exploit her all over again. What little story we have here concerns two neighboring families, one of whom has a daughter, the other a son. The girl's father becomes wealthy while the boy's father remains poor and a "spite" fence is built between the two houses by the wealthy family, putting a crimp in the early romance of the boy and girl, who have to meet secretly. Baby Marie is the little sister of the girl. There is a picnic at which all the neighboring kiddies are invited and while this provides an opportunity for some kiddie stuff there is all too little of it and what we do get never gets over as more than ordinary stuff that we have had many times before. We got a few flashes of the clever little coon who has appeared in previous Baby Marie pictures, but there was nothing for him to do, and hence he is out of the picture so far as providing laughs is concerned. Near the finish they dragged in our old friend, the embezzler, who had appropriated funds from the wealthy father's account and a title explained, "Of course, Ralph was suspected, he handled the clothespin money. ..and then... we need a plot." Truer words were never spoken, but your patrons are going to figure that "the pardon came too late," because this was rather a tardy time for them to discover that they forgot to provide a story. Marie clears Ralph, who is the young feller in love with her older sister, by identifying a watch that the embezzler had very conveniently left on the scene of the robbery and then, after the "spite" fence had been torn down we had the clutch of Ralph and Marie's sister and faded out on Marie in the embrace of her kiddie sweetheart. Just to convince us that they didn't care much about how they finished this, the cameraman centered Marie and cut her sweetheart off at the neck on tho iris-out. Those who appeared were Minnie Danvers. Mary Talbot, J. N. McDowell. John Steppling, Mary Harris, Antrim Short and Kenneth Nordvke. ^student of Sc*ee±ie±a£t is -that pe*So*n*ho is woxkiiig to na&Ue tla.e caLsaema. a*4 Sec-tute I o± tlae EaHtae e ««ei»«« 5*s*aB