Reel Life (1916-1917)

mmmunmamm attention, together with the announcement that a new butterfly, Little “Pep,” has been secured to take her place. John Steppling as “Heinie, the Weinie Man,” furnishes much of the comedy, which is of a clean cut sort, well adapted to the balance of the play. “Heinie” supplies “Pep” and her little sister “Bess,” who is her constant companion, with “hotdog” sandwiches and other eatables from his basket. This character is sure of popularity since the “Weinie” man has become an established insti¬ tution throughout the United States, and his advent im¬ mediately becomes part of the play’s action. Scenes in the Midway are realistically portrayed and they have an interest all their own, since thousands of motion picture patrons who did not see the San Diego exposition are here given an opportunity to inspect some of the principal features of the big show in which the scene of “The Butterfly Girl” is laid. The familiar Midway exhibitions are there in all their tinsel and glamor — the shouting announcers and the girls in tights on the “samplers” outside the booths. These lightly clad damsels, some of them wearing wings and long flowing golden wigs, convince little “Pep” O’Malley that her dream has come true, for are not the fairies themselves wearing their wings and smiling down at her from their precarious perches? The photographic work is all so good that every feature of the play is brought out with the utmost dis¬ tinctness. In “Pep’s” wanderings about the grounds she is constantly under the eye of Renshaw, whose designs upon the child maintain interest in her adventures from beginning to end. Interest in the story grows with the attempt of Ren¬ shaw to get rid of “Trixie” Boniface, and to separate “Pep” from her small sister “Bess.” Throughout the play these two children are impressed with the reality of their surroundings. To them the stage mountains are real and all the tinsel and paint under the bright lights of the Midway are elements in the wonderful fairyland to which they have been transported. “Pep” O’Malley has been particularly fascinated by the spectacle of Mount Kilaeua in eruption, the tall wooden framework seen from the rear doing nothing to dispel her conviction that this is a real mountain and the nightly eruption a real convulsion of nature. The MARGARITA FISCHER MUTUAL STAR PRODUCTIONS. The Pearl of Paradise Miss Jackie of The Navy The Butterfly Girl The Devil’s Assistant Birds of Passage A Night At Tarquizzi convincing innocence of Miss Fischer’s “Pep” is what saves her from being laughed at when in a frenzied effort to escape the clutches of the evil Renshaw, the child tries to throw herself into the volcano’s crater and is rescued from the tangle of timbers behind it by Whipple, the gov¬ ernor’s son, who carries her off to safety. “THE DEVIL’S ASSISTANT” FISCHER’S NEXT PRODUCTION. Margarita Fischer’s next play, “The Devil’s Assistant,” is believed by Miss Fischer herself and by Director Harry Pollard of the Pollard Picture Plays Company, producers, to be one of the most striking as to plot and action, ever put on the screen under these auspices. There are distinguished players in the cast with Miss Fischer, including Monroe Salisbury, Kathleen Kirkham, Jack Mower and Joseph Harris. The story has to do with a conspiracy, in which a doctor and a jealous woman are involved, to ruin the life of the jealous woman’s rival by making a drug habitue of her through the insidious beginnings of drug administration for alleviation of pain. While the drama was not written as a preachment on the drug evil, it is nevertheless one of the strongest ser¬ mons against carelessness in the sale and administration of drugs that has ever been written. The play is full of thrilling episodes and Miss Fischer has an opportunity to appear at her best. REEL LIFE— Page Three