Exhibitors Herald (1926)

November 13, 1926 EXHIBITORS HERALD 57 Grange’s “One Minute to Play” being the subject of jest. The milk route thing can hardly be else than a thrust at Mr. Grange’s ice wagon training, of course, but the humor in that string of subtitles near the end which runs “Three Minutes to Play”— “Two Minutes to Play” — “One Minute to Play” and then “Twenty Seconds to Play” is a stroke of genius. And the beautiful part of it is that the kidding doesn’t interfere at all with entertainment purposes of the picture itself and Mr. Grange’s picture is hale and hearty enough to shake off the joke without a crinkle. Even C. C. Pyle ought to get a giggle out of it. But about the picture — Not much use in saying anything at all about it except that the exhibitors enthusiastically reporting it in the report section of this paper didn’t spoil it for me. In fact, I think they have understated the excellence of the production, sturdy as has been their praise. Among other convictions it left me with is one that Richard Dix has become just a little bit better straight leading man than Wallace Reid ever was — without remotely suggesting that hero — and I, who say this, believed Reid the ultimate in screen stars of his gender. during the football scenes many “Ohs” and “Ahs” of excitement were heard. Some sections of the picture are) slow moving and there are technical imperfections aplenty. But one forgets all these when the big game gets under way. Then there is action sufficient to overcome the effect of the preceding drags. The game, which is the big reason for the picture, looks like the real thing. There is only so much that can be done with a football picture, and about all that is done in “College Days.”— Al Barr. TF Mabel Normand’s return to the screen will assure us of comedies like “Raggedy Rose,” long may she stay in two reel features. It has a “Ginsberg” in it; it has a poor little beautiful “Rose” and an eligible bachelor sought by a designing young woman; but most of all it has a comedian who is the funniest of her sex. * * * Clyde Eckhardt’s certainty that “The Return of Peter Grimm” is the greatest picture of its kind ever made may well be founded on the fact that the picture is unique in story and production technique. Peter Grimm dies and returns to earth in photoplasmic form and Victor Schertzinger has kept that phase of the picture from being ghastly, as it would seem it would be. Janet Gaynor’s work in this picture marks her as a player to be reckoned with by directors in their future casting of roles. * * * Douglas Fairbanks decided color film will tell his story of Spain’s “Black Pirate” to best advantage and it’s easy to agree with him that it does. The tale of one pseudo pirate taking a vessel single handed supplies the story with a Fairbanksian role and that role supplies the audience with fulfillment of the desire which brought it to see the picture. * * * Richard Dix may live to have white whiskers and three chins before he ever has as good a picture for his talents as “The Quarterback.” There isn’t anything wrong with the picture and while it shows during football season it is quite entertaining. — Douglas Hodges. ^ ^ Films Stir World to Study Past; Milliken (Special to the Herald) ELMIRA, N. Y., Nov. 9. — Motion pictures are awakening a new consciousness of history and spurring the world to a better knowledge of the past, Carl E. Milliken, secretary of the M. P. P. D. A., declared recently in an address before the Children of the American Revolution. Saving historical pictures and news reels of great events is one of the greatest things that can be done for posterity, he said. Former Art Director for Chadwick in U. S . (Special to the Herald) NEW YORK, Nov. 9— Howard Simon, former art director with Chadwick Pictures Corporation, has returned to this country after a stay in France. He will resume his motion picture work at once. Egyptian Sanitation Film CAIRO — The public health administration of the Egyptian ministry of the interior is studying a plan to show sanitation propaganda films in the villages. Danes Film “Don Quixote ” PARIS — The Danish company Palladium has just completed filming “Don Quixote,’’ which was started in Spain. CONTRIBUTIONS 1^. EPORTS contributed by other members of the staff, each duly signed, follow. — T. 0. SERVICE. ARL HUDSON’S “Men of Steel” has been reported before in this department and in “What the Picture Did For Me,” but that doesn’t prevent one more flash of impressions from the production which is massive in its “props” but fragile in its delineation of feminine roles. The steel mill sequences are powerful and gripping. Somehow the butting battle between the crane engines reminded one of a tussle between prehistoric animals in “The Lost World.” There was beauty, too, in the shots of the mills. For those who might not believe beauty can be synonymous with roaring furnaces and ponderous steel ingots spitting fire, color photography was blended into the scenes to make doubly certain of the effect. There’s one scene that scarcely can be recommended for pre-sleep consumption and yet it’s one of the thrill-climaxes. It’s a scene depicting the death of the heroine’s brother, who recoils from contact with live wires only to plunge into a huge bucket of molten metal. That’s scarcely entertainment and certainly not the best subject for a domestic science cooking class, for example. It’s climatic, there’s no doubt about that. Milton Sills is human and likable throughout, and there’s good comedy — coarse but fitting the theme — in the friendly rivalry of George Fawcett and Frank Currier. Doris Kenyon and May Allison do their best with unnatural roles.— E. A. Rovelstad. * * * TT would be a simple thing to call Ralph Ince the whole show in “Breed of the) Sea” but for one man, and that’s Alphonz Ethier. To say that Ethier is heading straight for stardom doesn’t seem half as much a prediction as a statement of fact. At that there is a familiar ring in this forecast, so probably it has been made before. But to return to Ralph Ince. He does /. O. Taylor was cameraman for the Columbia picture “The Belle of Broadway,” starring Betty Compson. This picture is the second release of the season for the company. triple service. That reads almost like “triplet” service, and for that matter it even could be stretched to quadruplet, for he takes the roles of twin brothers, and in the part of one of the seminary-studentbrothers he also plays the one who turns pirate. And then) he impersonates his brothers. Besides, he directs “both of himself.” By the way, wonder what a megaphone thinks about when its owner takes an acting part in the production? “Breed of the Sea” seems to rise and ebb in its forcefulness. The scene of the bullwhipping of Pembroke (Ince) by Rawden (Ethier) and the closeup in which Pembroke reveals himself as the pirate Captain Blaze are powerful. Bits of Margaret Livingston’s acting as the carefree daughter of the trader stands out, but there is no justification for the scena showing her swimming au naturel in the pool. The piracy is turned into burlesque aboard the captured brigantine when the deaconess (Shanon Day) turns the pirate chief’s lieutenant into a sewing apprentice and the entire crew into a Sunday school class. At that the sudden swapping of a drama for a farce at this point brought laughs, so with entertainment as the objective of motion pictures the change must have been successful. Al Siegler, cameraman, did a fine job in photographing the sailship riding the ripples at sea at sundown. — E. A. Rovelstad. **T ENJOYED every bit of that picture,” remarked the woman seated behind me to her companion after the last flash of “College Days” had gone. The picture was on view during the week at the Granada, new Marks Brothers house in Chicago. The judgment seemed common to many present, for during the filming of the funnier sections of the picture laughter ran over the house like warm, light wind, and