Exhibitors Herald (Dec 1924-Mar 1925)

46 EXHIBITORS HERALD January 10, 1925 I HOPE all Herald readers have a Happy and prosperous New Year! Anyway, things look bright, don’t they? Now that that’s off our chest, we’ll get down to cases and begin to talk about the new pictures. We don’t always agree on their values as box-office attractions, and no one can tell in advance what a picture will gross, but there is fascination in discussing the new product. For instance, there is “Love’s Wilderness,” Corinne Griffith’s latest First National picture. It was adapted from a novel written by Evelyn Campbell, which tells about a very much harrassed young lady carefully guarded by two maiden aunts somewheres in the South. She longs for * romance and adventures and finally breaks away and marries a ne’er-do-well of the village, although in love with a fine young man who refuses to propose or take her seriously as a grown up young lady. Finally, however, the scape-grace is reported dead and she marries the other. They go to Africa and there run upon the first husband, now a convict. The convict saves Corinne from a terrific storm and he is in turn saved from the firing squad by her husband. The picture moves along smoothly up to the tropical storm, where it increases in interest and finally slumps into the conventional ending by having husband No. 1 die conveniently. Miss Griffith’s work shows improvement. She handled the dramatic scenes well, and Holmes Herbert was rather good. Ian Keith, however, missed by a mile as the hero. Robert Z. Leonard directed, and the fact that the story depends upon the long arm of coincidence wasn’t his fault. ♦ ♦ ♦ We Place a Check Mark After This One of the most interesting of the recently produced society dramas I have seen is “So This Is Marriage?” It’s got several things to recommend it, but what I liked most about it was the clever twist to the plot near the end, where Lew Cody, most always a villian to the bitter end, turns reformer, gives the erring wife some good advice and sends her home to her nice, plodding husband. The story isn’t much different from a host of others. It’s about a wife who “steps out” with another, thinking she is being cheated of good times due her. She meets a philanderer and is about to make a fatal step when he tells her a story based upon the incident of David and Beth-Sheba and she scurries home. There’s the new angle. Lew Cody is the philanderer as usual, and Eleanor Boardman is the little wife, while Conrad Nagle is the husband in the case. There is some of the most exquisite colored photoplay in “So This Is Marriage?” you ever saw. Almost a reel and a half of it, telling the biblical tale. There are always certain pictures you unconsciously put down in your mental book that you recall long after others have faded from memory. This one impressed me, and I’ll long remember it. ♦ * * Fair Western Feature with Hoot Gibson “The Hurricane Kid,” with Hoot Gibson, is pretty conventional stuff. Hoot does a lot of hard riding, and there’s a boss race at the finish that’s quite exciting, but the plot is so obvious from the start I couldn’t get excited over anything in it. The “wise cracking” titles flow by like a Spring freshet and Hoot tries his darnedest to put some pep into the tale. He is ably assisted by pretty Marian Nixon, who knows her way about a ranch, having appeared in a lot of Fox Westerns in her day. * * * Drama Written Around Chicago Fire Many years ago, E. P. Roe wrote a romance based upon the Chicago fire in 1871, and in adapting the story to the screen for Associated Exhibitors, the director, W. S. Van Dyke, hasn’t overlooked a dramatic incident to carry the story along. It is correct in atmosphere and I spent a pleasant hour and twenty minutes meeting Chicago’s old timers, such as Marshall Field, Potter Palmer and the folks who used to make Randolph street a busy thoroughfare. The underlying romance is nicely handled and the climax of the great fire furnishes the necessary “punch.” They refer to Mrs. O’Leary as the “Widow Leary” and spell the Bismarch Hotel as “Bismark” in the subtitles, but these are minor details. I found it quite well handled. * ♦ * Another “White List” Picture “The Price of Pleasure” serves admirably to bring out the talents of Virginia Valli and Norman Kerry. I found the adapted Marion Orth and Elizabeth Holding story quite up to the standard set by other companies in society dramas. Beautiful sets, a well chosen cast and splendid photography marked the production throughout. You’ll enjoy the work of Louise Fazenda, and also old George Fawcett and T. Roy Barnes, as a comical janitor. In fact, they’re all good, and I'm glad Virginia has a story worthy of her talents. Edward Sloman directed the production and didn’t miss a point to play up the high spots of the story. ♦ ♦ ♦ Richard Dix a Star by Test Let there be no question about this man Dix. He’s a star by that best of tests, a picture that depends upon him. “A Man Must Live” is such a picture. It’s a big load for even the broad Dix' shoulders, for he must put the effect of reality into episodes themselves unreal and illogical. He does it. In no other way can I explain my liking for this picture in spite of the fact that it contains one of those fiction managing editors of a fiction newspaper. I’d say the picture was unnecessarily unfair to newspapers if it weren’t true that newspapers have been unnecessarily unfair to motion pictures in so many instances and for the same purpose. Lest I, too, be unfair, however, I should say that others who are less familiar with newspaper methods liked the picture as is, and, of course, newspaper people don’t pay theatre profits anyway.