Exhibitors Herald (Dec 1924-Mar 1925)

58 EXHIBITORS HERALD January 3, 1925 LARENCE BROWN’S contribution to Carl Laemmle’s twenty-one “White List’’ pictures — “Smouldering Fires’’ — merits the position of being first on the ElniversalJewel list. It is my idea of superb entertainment and I want to see more like it. Pauline Frederick, through deft handling of a difficult role, comes through with flying colors and she is given excellent support by Laura LaPlante, Tully Marshall, Wanda Hawley, Malcolm McGregor and Bert Roach. The story concerns a woman of forty, who runs her late father’s factory, falls in love with a young assistant and marries him, only to discover that her younger sister is also in love with him and he with her. Here’s a situation that has served many times in other pictures but under Mr. Brown’s handling it appears new, and the work of the entire cast lifts it away above anything this or any other company has done in a long time. It is all so naturally done, it is new. * * * “The Early Bird” A Riot of Action Johnny Hines’ latest for Warner Brothers is called “The Early Bird.” It gives you a cross section of the life of a milk man with many bright subtitles and swift action as is the wont in Hines pictures. Personally I enjoyed it thoroughly, the fooling and kidding is so spontaneous and you wonder the while what will happen next. Johnny is an early morning milk dispenser who gets mixed up in an all-night party, takes the daughter of the house out for a ride and treats her to a “banquet” in an H. & H. automat. The villain poisons the milk supply and Johnny with a six-shooter destroys all the bottles sitting on the doorsteps as he passes down the street. This was one of the funniest bits ever filmed. There are numerous tie-ups with hat stores, milk stoppers, restaurants, in this picture. Go to it. * * ♦ Bebe Daniels in Spanish Role “Argentine Love” presents Bebe Daniels, James Rennie and Ricardo Cortez in a colorful tale of South America, with a hot-blooded Spaniard vieing with an .American for the hand of a pretty Southern girl. The mob sequence where Cornejo is killed and Bebe is tied to the card to be flogged is a tense and dramatic scene, well handled. Vicente Blasco Ibanez wrote it and it makes an ideal vehicle for prettv Bebe Daniels. * * * A Crook Melodrama With Plenty of Suspense “Silk Stocking Sal” gives Evelyn Brent every opportunity to display her histrionic ability and she makes the most of it. It follows the lines of many similar yarns about a lady Raffles who saves the man she loves. The climax is exciting and the whole thing ends with a snappy finish, as all good screen plays should. Evelyn is “Silk Stocking Sal” who leaves the evil gang she works for to take a position as secretary to a busy man. A thief murders her employer’s partner and he is accused of the crime. In order to get evidence which will save her employer Sal again joins the old gang and gets the needed confession just as the hero is about to die in the electric chair. All that saved him was a broken wire. Tod Browning made the picture and did a pretty good job. New Model Indians in “Tongues of Flame” There are Indians of a new model in “Tongues of Flame.” They are the domestic Indians that live today on the reservations. The story casts Thomas Meighan as a lawyer who captained a company of them through the war and enjoys their friendship as a result. The action arises from his protection of their interests in very unusual circumstances. Bessie Love is the Indian Girl in the case and she’s great. Meighan and the other whites in the case do pretty well, but the picture is remembered mainly for its novelty. * ♦ ♦ Slight Story But Viola is Interesting “The Beauty Prize” is the sort of thing Viola Dana does best. It is a Nina Wilcox Putnam story about an Atlantic city prize beauty contest and Viola plays the role of a small town girl who runs off with first money. I liked it immensely and so did the audience at the State-Lake theatre, Chicago, where I dropped in to see it. Lloyd Ingraham directed and by a deft twist of the story he brings in interesting scenes of a radio broadcasting station in full blast. * * * “Wes” Barry in Grown-up Part Wesley Barry, now grown up, comes along this month with a pleasing little comedy-drama called “Battling Banyan” which Associated Exhibitors is handling. It has a couple of fistic battles in it that closely resemble the real thing, and the ring battle in which Wesley tries to stick for five rounds to win $1,000 will pull ’em out of their seats. It is not an expensive production, most of the stuff looks as though it was taken in a garage, but the character drawing is well done and the titling is cleverly executed. “Wes” is a garage mechanic, in love with the bookkeeper, who “falls” for a prize fighter. Wesley in a five round bout loses the fight but wins enough to buy an interest in the garage, then finds the other fellow trying to make love to his girl and whips him in his dressing room. I like a good scrap and this is one of the best staged scenes you ever saw. « « » Theodore Roberts is Back ! Theodore Roberts is back on the job, cigar and all, in “Locked Doors.” If you are as fond of Roberts as the rest of the world and myself you will welcome the picture for that reason. It is sentimental stuff, containing matrimonial sacrifice, etc., and it has one stretch of bed room stuff which gave me what B. L. T. used to call “a sharp and distinctly localized pain.” I refer to the episode where the lover looks across the court into the wife’s bedroom while the husband says “Goodnight.” I mention this specifically because it probably will not remain in all the prints. The cast has Betty Compson, Kathlyn Williams, Robert Edeson, Theodore Von Eltz and others, but Roberts, in a wheel chair part, is the one you remember.