Exhibitors Herald (Sep-Dec 1923)

58 EXHIBITORS HERALD November 24, 1923 RIGHT: Ernest Truex and Florence Eldridge in an amusing scene from the Fox picture, "Six Cylinder Love." LEFT: Dramatic scene from "Hoodman Blind," featuring David Butler and Gladys Hulette. An early Fox publication. a sixteen-story building and motion picture theatre seating 3,000 people, and that he has recently opened a new theatre_in Oakland, Calif. He said, too, that he has acquired, as the headquarters for his European business, a new building in London at 13 Berners street, which, during the war, was the Canadian Army headquarters. "I believe in the future of Motion Pictures," said Mr. Fox. "I am building on that belief. That is all there is to it." + + + May Establish New Standards PROMINENT in the list of productions arranged for the 1923-24 season by William Fox are eight specials which are expected to establish a new high standard for pictures. Most of them are from original stage plays or widelyknown stories. The list includes: "Six Cylinder Love," "You Can't Get Away With It," "North of Hudson Bay," "Temple of Venus," "Hoodman Blind," "The Net," "The Shepherd King," and "Gentle Julia." In presenting "The Temple of Venus," William Fox offers what he considers one of the most unique screen events in history. The picture is called a veritable "screen follies," with its cast of beautiful girls in bathing costumes, its underwater photography and its general air of spectacular elaboration. Directed by Henry Otto on Santa Cruz Island, "The Temple of Venus" was first presented at the Central theatre in New York on October 29, to an audience which gasped in amazement. Mary Phil One of the immense desert scenes in "The Shepherd King," which J. Gordon Edwards produced abroad for Fox. bin, noted beauty, heads a cast of hundreds of bathing girls recruifed from the ranks of the most beautiful performers to be found on the West Coast. David Butler has the masculine lead. The story is a love idyl with all the fantastic elements of "A Midsummer Night's Dream." The crystal grottoes of Santa Cruz Island, the calm of the Pacific and the tropical beauty of the island, combine to present a picture more dazzling than the luxurious sets of a Broadway extravaganza. Considerable trick photography and some actually remarkable under-water shots add to the attractions. In support of Miss Philbin and Butler are Phyllis Haver, Celeste Lee, Scnorita Conseulla, Marilynn Boyd, Lorraine Easton. Helen Virgil, William Walling, Micky McBain, Alice Day, William Boyd, Leon Barry, Robert Cline, Frank Keller and an enormous cast of extras. In order to provide adequate lighting facilities for many of the scenes, it is said that Director Otto found it necessary to have a cable constructed from the mainland to Santa Cruz Island. This was one of the many heavy costs of the production. It was necessary for the cast to remain on the island for a period of several weeks while the picture was being filmed, another item which added materially to the ultimate cost of the production. Scenes Spectacular In "Hoodman Blind" ANOTHER William Fox adaptation of notable stage plays comes in the production of "Hoodman Blind," from the success of 1885 by Sir Henry Arthur Jones and Wilson Barrett. The modern screen version contains all of the dynamic emotions of the original and in addition has the spectacular scenes impossible on the stage. A shipwreck scene is said to be one of the most realistic ever screened. Primitive battles between men of brawn, one of them fought in a raging surf, bring thrills which would be impossible excepting in actual life or on the screen. David Butler has the leading masculine role, first played by Wilson Barrett in London and later by Kyrle Bellew at Wallack's theatre in New York. Annie Robe, then the "sweetheart of Broadway," played the dual role now handled by Gladys Hulette. Assisting the principals are Regina Connelly. Frank Campeau, Marc McDermott, Trilby Clark, Jack Walters and Eddie Gribbon. The director was John Ford. Among veteran playgoers many will be found who recollect the original story, which has undergone but little change in the screen adaptation. It is the tragedy of a man with the wanderlust and the irresponsible character which permits him to desert one woman for another and the second for a third. He brings two daughters into the world, one the child of his wife, the other born to one of his luckless flames. The girls bear a striking resemblance. The first one marries a fisherman. The other becomes a wan little butterfly beneath the dance hall lights. Owing to the resemblance between his wife and her sister, the fisherman husband mistakes one for the other and accuses the former of infidelity. Nothing can convince him of his error. It is not until he lashes his way through a raging sea to rescue the shipwrecked