Exhibitors Herald (Dec 1924-Mar 1925)

74 EXHIBITORS HERALD February 28, 1^25 “CHARLEY’S AUNT” BOWLS ’EM OVER I F YOU think you are picture wise, know “what the public wants” and all that, see “Charley’s Aunt” in a theatre and learn your mistake. Christie, having revamped and modernized the plot in dozens of short subject comedies, stuck tight to the text for the feature version and at the Orpheum last week it bowled ’em over, strangled ’em and sent ’em out ten years younger. I never saw so many people laugh so much at one picture. This is the original “Charley’s Aunt.” The sub-titles are the stage lines that everybody knows and they are as funny as ever. The continuity is the stage continuity, the “acts” being almost as definitely separated as by the dropping of the curtain. And the cast is the sort of cast that always played it on the stage, Syd Chaplin being the show and his support the scenery. Syd Chaplin, by the way, is by far the best of the fifty-odd Charley’s Aunts I have seen. I have an idea that projection room estimate of this picture would not be sensational. It lacks the glittering trickeries that sell film “experts.” But people battle to get into the Orpheum in Chicago and a similar condition marking its New York run at the Colony moves John Spargo to call it “the Broadway laugh of the decade.” It is indeed a laugh, and I imagine that while Mr. and Mrs. Public are laughing at the picture the Messrs. Christie indulge a chuckle at the expense of those who’ve been making feature pictures all these years. WHAT TO DO WITH THOMAS MEIGHAN w HAT to do with Thomas Meighan is a problem and “Coming Through” is among Paramount’s less worthy solutions. No star is more warmly favored than Meighan. Exhibitors complain in the report department that this or that feature doesn’t do him justice, but nobody seems to have a clear idea as to the kind of picture he needs. Yet, despite successive vehicles pronounced inadequate, the public flocks to see him. “Coming ’Through” is not much of a picture. It’s a ridiculous melodrama about coal mines. Meighan seems driven through it, Wallace Beery acts like it’s his afternoon oflF and Lila Lee, whose return surely was a signal for special effort, is just among those present. Frank Campeau creates the only character you feel you might have met somewhere. Notwithstanding which, Chicagoans jammed McVicker’s last week to see it and in New York they’re moving it from the Kivoli into the Rialto for a second week. What “Coming Through” does or does not do for box offices is of passing importance and no concern of mine, but what to do with Thomas Meighan is a concern of the trade. If I read the crystal correctly, the public’s regard for him is that which every star seeks to enjoy and the rest of us hope all picture players one day will share. Whatever must be done to get him into the vehicles he should have should be done. Speaking of Premieres These “world premieres’’ are becoming too plentiful. It’s getting so some of the pictures have half a dozen of them. First thing you know, nobody’ll believe it and, what’s worse, nobody’ll care. Let’s be sure, before we stick that line in the ad copy. It isn’t such a wonderful line, anyway. The effect of the present practice is to get picture advertising in wrong with the people who buy the tickets. “THUNDERING HERD’’ A VITAL WESTERN ARAMOUNT has another of those vital Westerns, standing as did that concern’s “Covered Wagon” and “North of 36,” head and shoulders above the mob. It’s “The Thundering Herd,” written by Zane Grey, and it’s a story of the West of 1876, when the wilderness was dotted with great herds of buffalo, marauding Indians and a few white people. The Indians, realizing their food supply is threatened by the white man killing buffaloes for hides, go on the warpath and the last reel pictures a thrilling battle between the two factions. The early footage is taken up with two outfits; the Jett family, with a pretty girl in their camp as a drudge, and the Hudnalls, late from Illinois, who are lawabiding and honest. Jack Holt has the role of hero who saves Lois Wilson, the drudge, from her foster father, a dance hall proprietor. Noah Beery is the despicable Jett and Raymond Hatton a buffalo hunter and guide. Charles Ogle looks and acts like the stalwart farmer he is supposed to be. You never saw so many buffaloes in your life. A footnote states no cruelty was permitted in making the picture, referring to the buffalo scenes, but the horses hitched to heavy wagons on that frozen stream had a hard time of it. I’M ANXIOUS TO SEE “THE LOST WORLD” i’M ANXIOUS to see “The Lost World.” In the first place, it’s more or less something new in pictures. Secondly, ten Boston newspaper critics agree that it’s great and when ten newspaper critics agree on anything it must be different, whether or not the critics agree on the right or wrong side of the fence. Down East the picture is getting them in, so many of them that John Spargo had to turn back from the theatre and await a less crowded hour. It’s odd that they didn’t break the picture here in Watterson R. Rothacker’s home town, but they didn’t and that’s why I can’t tell you whether the Boston critics are right or wrong. EVELYN BRENT GOOD IN DUAL ROLE G IVEN the task of playing two characters in “Midnight Molly,” F. B. O.’s clever star, Evelyn Brent, brings home the bacon. It’s the story of a lady crook and a man running for office who fears defeat through a scandal when his wife runs off with the cashier of a manufacturing firm. The lady crook takes the place of the run-away. Of course the striking likeness between the two women could never really happen but then that’s the stuff pitcures are made of. For comedy relief there’s the blundering detective and a lot of newspaper reporters on the scent of a story. The story is an original one written especially for Miss Brent by Fred Kennedy Myton and was directed by Lloyd Ingraham assisted by Harry Berman’s son, P. S. Berman. A thoroughly enjoyable tale well produced. “WOMEN AND GOLD” GOOD IDEA WASTED ^ HAT men have struggled, fought and died for women and gold since the beginning of things is the proposition admirably presented at the opening and as the basis of “Women and Gold.” Then Frank Mayo, Sylvia Breamer and others loosely enact a rambling melodrama laid in South America. As you recall it afterward, the story isn’t so bad, but the telling is so bad that it spoils your evening.