Picture Play Magazine (Mar-Jul 1929)

100 Continued from page 94 going" on in the financial part of filmdom, and as there are other indications besides that the old regime is passing, they are viewed with certain misgivings. Whoever is to dictate the future has a lot to live up to. The entertainment had better be good, because the memory of what has already come and gone has, on the whole, been distinctly pleasant, and often rare and beautiful. Romantic Nomenclature. Names are getting odder and odder. Here's a new one to put on the increasing list — Moon Carroll. She is a stage actress playing in Norma Shearer's "The Last of Mrs. Cheyney." Lloyd, Plus Two Ladies. One girl is not quite sufficient for Harold Lloyd's new comedy. So he has done the unprecedented thing of Continued from page 98 That isn't so good, unless it is done convincingly. The story introduces us to a motherless young girl, Erie, whose life has been spent on a canal boat under the stern domination of a hard-shell father, who justifies his cruelty by quoting biblical texts. Finally Erie meets the deck hand of a tug, and the youthful pair fall in love. Against the father's orders the young fellow teaches Erie how to read, and they run away to spend a day at a fair. Both the girl and the boy are beaten by her father, the boy being left half dead as the barge creeps off. Months later, when the vessel is tied up for the winter, a storm, causes it to break from its moorings and it is in peril of being dashed to pieces on the rocks, when the boy goes to the rescue in his tug. When he meets with disaster, Erie heroically saves him by dragging herself along a tow line amid the raging waters. Of course there's a sunshiny conclusion. Scenes of pathos and genuine humanness are frequent early in the film, but the melodrama is reminiscent of a bygone day in its violence. However, the acting of Jean Hersholt, Sally O'Neil, and Malcolm McGregor is exceptionally good, and the occasional dialogue, though not helpful to an understanding of the characters, causes no annoyance. An Innocent Escapade. Gentle as a zephyr on an August day is "Geraldine." But, alas, it isn't nearly so refreshing. The name of Booth Tarkington as its author inspires the hope that one is to enjoy Hollywood Higk Ligkts selecting a second leading lady. She is Mary McAllister. The real heroine is played by Barbara Kent. But Miss McAllister's role, so Harold tells us, is very important. Lloyd also related some portions of the plot of his production, and we'll wager it will be one of the best he has made in several seasons. Clever gags will abo'und, and their effect will be heightened by the use of sound. Lloyd may also try a few dialogue sequences. Aquatic Chorus Passes. Mack Sennett has declared against bathing girls, so he tells us. They're not essential, he feels, for talking comedies, and that is what Sennett is doing right now — filming talking comedies most enthusiastically. " However, in one picture he did have a bevy of beach beauties — perhaps just as a gesture of good will to one of the attractions that have made him widely known as a picture personality. Sennett also had a roaring lion in one of his short-reelers. The noise made by the beast was realistic and boisterous. What's more, it keeps up a Sennett tradition, for lions always played an active part in thrill finishes of the earlier comedies. It seems funny to visit the Sennett establishment nowadays. The famous comedy maker has moved far out beyond the bounds of filmland, and his company is housed now in an elegant Spanish group of buildings. It is a very classy menage, and a contrast to the historic, ramshackle lot where good, old Ben Turpin, Louise Fazenda, Fred Mace, Ford Sterling, Mabel Normand, Charlie Chaplin, and Chester Conklin frolicked, and where the talents of Marie Prevost, Phyllis Haver, and other aquatic sirens, were first discovered. The Screen in ReViextf his inimitable characterization of adolescence, but the scenario was carefully denatured of this and every other individuality. Instead, it is just another film of jazz youth and is not sufficiently original to go anywhere near the head of its class. It starts out rather well by introducing Geraldine, a plain, clumsy girl in love with a dashing man about town who will have none of her. Her sympathetic father tries to help her by employing a youth to teach her charm. He begins by inducing her to cast aside her spectacles and — but you have seen this sort of rejuvenation often enough to know the process well. The two go to a road house, enter a dancing contest and win the cup just as the place is raided. A rather amusing sequence follows in jail, where the youth masquerades as a girl in a cell with a dozen females and is rescued by Geraldine, now indifferent to the sophisticated gentleman who formerly gave her the cold shoulder. Marian Nixon, in the title role, is attractive and convincing, particularly in Geraldine's uglyduckling phase, and Eddie Quillan, as the young instructor, is clever and likable. Both acquit themselves creditably in the dialogue alloted to them. It's just that the conversation and the story are without stimulating qualities. The Ham What Am. A quaint antique of a movie called "The Lone Wolf's Daughter" stars Bert Lytell who, they tell me, is a sensation on the stage. But neither his acting nor his voice, briefly heard, justify his reputation. It may be that the character of Michael . Lanyard, "The Lone Wolf," has grown tiresome through repetition and has become outmoded as well. Certainly the debonair crook, who steals jewels, has given way to a brainier and more desperate criminal in the underworld films of to-day. The gentleman thief is passe; he has been supplanted by the roughneck bootlegger. Mr. Lytell makes this latest Michael Lanyard a stagy actor fluent in the use of the tricks of the old stock company — noble, clashing, affable and mechanical. In this latest chapter of The Lone W olf's artificial life, he has reformed and is trying to conceal his identity in order not to spoil the matrimonial chances of his adopted daughter. In the course of this, he foils a jewel robbery and unmasks two crooks wanted by Scotland Yard. It is all quite dull, and one's sympathy naturally goes to the crooks in their humiliation at being thwarted by such a phony mastermind. Besides Mr. Lytell, much of the film is unintentionally funny, particularly the scene of an auction, where valuable jewels lie about for persons to pick up and do with as they please. However, the high light of this episode is the prominence given a "Ming" vase and the fact that it is not even Chinese, but was obviously culled from a bargain basement. Gertrude Olmsted, Donald Keith, Charles Gerrard, and Lilyan Tashman are some of the luckless ones in the cast.