Exhibitors Herald (1925)

April 18, 1925 EXHIBITORS HERALD 57 father. Taking what they can conceal about them, they rejoin Esteban and Norine Evans, wealthy American girl, a filibuster, who has helped him get well. There is a double wedding before they steal out to a ship which sails for the United States. The other special from Frank Lloyd will be based upon rVingie E. Roe’s new novel, “The Splendid Road.'* This is the romantic story of Sandra Lehault, fine, dark and vivid, who goes west to play a man’s role and loses her heart to a man she meets on the road. Men seek her favors, particularly Clehollis, the gambler, who arranges she shall win at his gaming tables. She repulses him. When she finds that the man she loves is engaged to another girl, whose heart is breaking for him, she surrenders her lover and moves on to Oregon. Three years later, her lover arrives, bringing his child for her to mother. His wife is dead. Through all of Sandra’s tribulations love has endured. » » « THREE CORFNNE GRIFFITH PROOUCTIONS. — “FOREVER AFTER.” — Three pictures for First National releases will be made next season by Corinne Griffith Productions, Inc.i of which E. M. Asher is president. The first of these is “Forever After,” from Owen Davis’ successful stage play which had a very good run on Broadway, followed by a tour of the country. The role of Jennie Clayton, daughter of wealthy small town parents, is one that will give Miss Griffith an opportunity for a dramatic characterization of an average American girl. Ted Wayne goes to Harvard, though his parents cannot afford to send him, to make himself a suitable match for Jennie, who is going to Vassar. He works hard, spending his summers in Boston to earn extra money, and makes the Harvard crew. After graduation he returns home. All he can find to do is to dispense soda at a small drugstore. In order that Jennie may be free to marry someone more suitable, he tells her he no longer loves her. When Jennie, as a war nurse, brings the wounded Ted back to health at a war hospital, their love story comes to a happy conclusion. « * « "ASHES.” — A second Corinne Griffith production will be “Ashes,” from Reginald Goode’s play in which Florence Reed starred. Miss Griffith will play the role of Marjorie Lane, member of a mediocre repertoire company touring the English provinces. Her worthless husband is a member of the same company. To save their infant daughter’s life, they leave her with relatives in England. Five years later Marjorie makes a triumphant debut in New York. Word comes that her daughter has been drowned. Marjorie is able to pull herself together sufficiently to go through the performance. Later she finds that her flapper sister has vamped her worthless husband. To. save her sister she in turn vamps her husband into protestations of love for her, while her sister is concealed where she can overhear. She saves her sister, later divorcing her husband and marrying the man who really loved her. The part affords Miss Griffith a dramatic and highly emotional role. * * * “CLASSIFIED.” — In the winner group of First National releases will be “Classified,” a third Corinne Griffith production, from the Edna Ferber short story published in a recent issue of the Cosmopolitan Magazine. The story has an excellent role for a young leading woman. First National recently made a picture from Miss Perber’s big selling novel, “So Big,” with Colleen Moore starred. “Classified” is in sharp contrast to that picture, but has the same everyday reality and facility in characterization. Miss Bobby Comet is employed in the telephone want ad department of a New York morning newspaper. She lives at home and spends her money on her clothes, her makeup and the things that will make her look like the girls who live in the more fashionable quarters of the city. She pities her elder sister, married and living in New Jersey with her two children, spending her money on her children and on the home, never on herself. Bobby declares she will never be like that, nor live in a dump like the $70 a month apartment in which her parents live. She goes out mostly with married men, to restaurants, theatres and cafes. She boasts that she can always look out for herself — and does. But when she meets again Jesse Whiting, a friend of her brother, she loses her heart. He makes but $40 a week and they will have to start housekeeping in a two-room apartment away uptown, not half as comfortable as her parents’ home which she considered a dump. But Bobby is altogether human and she follows her heart without regret. “THE COMEBACK.” — A starring vehicle for Milton Sills of unusual promise is “The Comeback,” a recent novel by M. D, Crawford. It gives Sills the role of a prizefighter who becomes foreman of a Maine lumber camp and finally retires from the pugilistic world for love of a girl. Sills has been seen in several pictures in which a hand-to-hand encounter formed the big punch of the film, notably in “The Spoilers” and “As Man Desires,” and In a sword and dagger duel in “The Sea Hawk,” but no previous picture is recalled in which he acted the role of a welterweight champion. In “The Comeback” he will be seen in two fights, a fistic encounter in the lumber camp and in the prizering in Madison Square Garden. That the star will gh'e an excellent account of himself in both fights is a foregone conclusion. He is an athlete, always in trim, and is declared one of the most skilled boxers in pictures. The story opens with “Red” Donlin, welterweight champion, retiring to a Maine lumber camp as a result of straining his right arm at Ronald Colman and Leon Errol, featured players in First National pictures. his training camp. Parker, his emiiloyer, warns him against Black Jack Farot, a rival lumber l>oss. The fighter falls in love with Farot’s sister, Jeannie, who is opposed to all fighting because her father thus lost his life. By having his logs out ahead of Farot, Red anticipates no trouble with him, but Parker, vindictive because Farot refused to let Jeannie marry him, release a pile af logs in time to block Farot’s float. Donlin and Farot have a great fight. Later Donlin returns to the prizering against Jeannie’s wishes, to make enough money to get Farot out from under the thumb of Parker, who has bought up his notes. Donlin wins the boxing match. Jeannie, howeVer, thinks he has lost and when he returns is reconciled to him. Donlin deserts the prizering for good. . * * THREK COLLEEN MOORE PICTURES.— In addition to her appearance in the firm’s special, “Irene,” Colleen Moore will be seen in three of its 'Winner group of releases. They will afford her a striking diversity of parts and will serve to increase her already big following. One of these is “Joseph Greer and His Daughter” from the recent popular novel by Henry Kitchell Webster. Miss Moore’s role is that of Beatrice Greer, whose parents are separated. Neither has understood her and she has become deceitful, without faith in anyone. Her father, an inventor on the verge of success, sends for her at the age of twenty. Her friends are a dissipated cakeeater and his jazz-mad friends, and Burns, her father’s chauffeur, who loves her. Forbidden to see Burns, she elopes and marries him. later learning to fly when her husband enters the air mail service. A second Colleen Moore vehicle will be “Clarissa and the Post Road,” from the Saturday Evening Post story by Grace Sartwell Mason, Clarissa uses her freedom and inheritance to launch the crippled son of their gardener in the lunch wagon business on a strip of her father’s estate. She dons an apron and serves his customers, but falls in love with the driver of an express wagon from Boston. The driver does not think she is good enough for him, and advises her to get a better position. One night she overhears bootleggers plotting to hold up her truck driver and load their stuff onto his wagon. She tries to warn him, but arrives only in time to free him and to aid in the pursuit of the bootleggers. One is captured. Later her truck driver is found to be a college boy with good antecedents. He is entirely satisfied with her when he learns of her social standing and a wedding looms. There is much humor in the part and it gives Miss Moore an excellent opportunity to portray a modern American girl. The third story which has been purchased for Miss Moore is “Don .Tuan’s Three Nights.” from the German novel by I.udwig Biro. The star’s role is that of Ninette Cavallar who falls in love with a great tenor, idol of women. Instead of responding to the overtures of the infatuated young girl to become her lover, Aradi, the tenor, appoints himself her guardian. He instils precepts calculated to make her the ideal woman. He finds a suitable husband for her. Then, after her marriage, he seeks to assume the role of her lover only to find that the transformation he had made in her character was too thorough a job. She tells him she loves her husband and nothing in the world would induce her to be unfaithful to him. The picture will Include glimpses of hotel life in Europe and grand opera sequences. Miss Moore’s role is In sharp contrast with anything in which she previously has appeared. TWO PICTURES FOR DORIS KENYON.— First National has bought two stories as vehicles for Doris Kenyon, recently cofeatured w’ith Milton Sills in “I Want My Man” and the feminine lead in “A Thief in Paradise.” One is Gerald Beaumont’s “The Lady Who Played Fidele,” a story of New Orleans of 20 years ago and of today. It is a romantic tale of a love that lasted a lifetime. Fidele, the beautiful daughter of a French New Orleans aristocrat, falls in love with a handsome youth whom she meets clandestinely. Her father discovers her secret during Mardi Gras and locks her up. The wealthj^ suitor favored by her father hires assassins to make away with her lover. He kills one of them and to free him Fidele promises to marry the wealthy suitor. When her lover is free she goes to him. Then she dares the favored suitor to marry her. He does and takes her to France, in revenge, where he keeps her shut up in a chateau for 20 years. On his death she returns to New Orleans and finally meets her lover, who has remained devoted to her. The other vehicle for Miss Kenyon is “Bed and Board” by Leonore J. Coffee. It is a story of Polly Fosdick, a dissatisfied wife, who thinks she is a slave to her husband’s whims. After several quarrels she leaves Fosdick and shares an apartment with several divorcees, one of whom plots to capture Polly’s husband and furthers Frayer Grant’s designs upon Pollv. Fosdick, really in love with his wife, takes up with the divorcee Maud Craddock to keep in touch with Polly. The latter goes to work as a country buyer in a department store and finds that her idea of a working woman’s freedom undergoes a great change. Grant’s advances, without any thought of marriage, shock her into the realization that it is a woman’s destiny to be a wife and she regrets having left her husband. A near tragedy, growing out of Grant’s attempt to take advantage of her, leads to a reconciliation with her husband. She finds that ministering to a man’s comfort and happiness is not slavery when mutual love is the foundation upon which their relationship is built. The part of Polly is one that fits Miss Kenyon perfectly. “SHORE LEAVE.” — A Richard BarthelmessInspiration Picture Production for First National release will be “Shore Leave,” from the play by Hubert Osborne, produced a season or two ago by Davis Belasco. John S. Robertson, who has wielded the megaphone on all of Berthelmess’s recent pictures, will direct “Shore Leave.” The production will be filmed with the active co-operation of the United States Naval Academy and the navy department. Just as in making “Classmates,” he had the aid of the West Point Military Academy and the war department. He was the guest of the navy department on board the U. S. S. New York on his return from Cuba, whither he had gone for a short vacation after completion of "Soul-Fire.” “Shore Leave” is the comedy romance of a gob, Barthelmess will play the role of “Bilge” Smith, the gob, while the role of Connie Martin, a young village dre.ssmaker whose mother was an elephant trainer and her father the master of a clipper ship, which Frances Starr acted on the stage, has been assigned to Dorothy Mackaill. This young actress, who has advanced among younger players, has just finished the lead in First National’s own production of "Chickie.” She has appeared with Barthelmess before, in “The Fighting Blade” and in “Twenty-one.” The role of the sailor hero of “Shore Leave” is believed by the star and his dirt-ctor to he one of the best that Barthelmess has essayed and one in which he will be as popular as he was In “Classmates,” “New Toys” and "Torablc David.” Inspiration will produce three other pictures starring Barthelmess for First National release during the coming season, but no announcement as to their identity has as yet been made. “EAST OF THE SETTING SUN.” — A First National picture for Constance Talmadge will be Joseph M. Schenck’s production of “East of the Setting Sun,” the new novel about Graustark recently written by George Barr McCutcheon. It is enjoying the success achieved by all of Mr. McCutcheon’s novels of that mythical Balkan kingdom. Its serial publication aroused much interest and in book form it Is having a big sale. Miss Talmadge will have the role of the Princess ’Virginia of Graustark. It is a part which falls easily within her fine gifts for ingenuousness and sense of comedy. It will still further intrench this gifted screen actress in the affections of her following. Mr. Schenck has not yet announced the director or who will play opposite the star.' “East of the Setting Sun” is a sequel both to “Graustark” and to “Beverly of Graustark.” It possesses all the glamour, picturesqueness of scene, romantic characterizations, swift and violent action which characterized its predecessors. A yoiing American ne'wcspaper correspondent, Pendennis Yorke, is sent by his publisher to find