Exhibitors Herald (1927)

September 24, 1927 EXHIBITORS HERALD 51 on Picture s rHIS department contains news, information and gossip on current productions. It aims to supply service which will assist the exhibitor in keeping in touch with developments in connection with pictures and picture personalities — and what these are doing at the box office. No prophecies on the entertainment value of pictures are made. Opinions expressed are simply those of the author or of his contributors and the reader is requested to consider them only as such. — EDITOR’S NOTE. THE JANNINGS TRIUMPH AVING scoffed more loudly than most at the idea of importing performers successful in foreign production, I wish to cheer more loudly than most for the success of Emil Jannings in “The Way of All Flesh.” I herewith make record that this picture contains the best acting I have seen in more years than I like to enumerate. I add my official okay to the already long list of those designating the importation of Mr. Jannings a smart piece of business and a good idea. “The Way of All Flesh” is not, as you may have heard, a stereotyped picture. It is, in a sense, not a picture at all, but rather a series of definitely related incidents. It is engrossing entertainment, however, and I am becoming a firm believer in the openswitch type of ending employed in this and a few other pictures of recent manufacture. It is vastly preferable to either the tragic or happy conclusion, in my humble and perhaps prejudiced opinion. Mr. Jannings begins this picture as a Milwaukee bank cashier and ends it as a Chicago chestnut vendor. In between he goes the way of all flesh and experiences the results that maxim writers assure us are inevitable. He does not experience them, however, in the maxim book manner. Everything is very real, very intense, very human and interesting. And if one insists upon drawing a moral from a motion picture there are adequate sources of such in this exhibition. Mr. Jannings is, of course, the major content of the picture. He is always before the camera, as he should be and he is good enough to obscure such excellent performances as those of Belle Bennett and Phyllis Haver as the two women in his life. He is even good enough to obscure slightly inaccurate representations of locations used in the picture. It is, from first to last, an acting picture. I believe it is genuinely the thing that is so often miscalled a characterization. I am in favor of giving Mr. Jannings more things of this sort to work with. He is an able performer, an artist with makeup, an understanding portrayer of character and a pitiless exactor of detail. If there are others in Europe capable of similar development under American direction they should be brought over. By T. O. SERVICE MEIGHAN GETS AWAY \ last week’s issue I mentioned the bad luck experienced by Milton Sills in “Framed” at the Oriental and promised to tell you what happened to Thomas Meighan in “We’re All Gamblers,” the succeeding picture at the same playhouse. I am glad I did so, for the succession of attractions is not without point. In “We’re All Gamblers” Mr. Meighan pleased the young folks who make up the Oriental audience as few actors in few pictures do please them. It is, I believe, the most satisfactory picture Mr. Meighan has had in a number of years. I believe credit for this should go to Mr. James Cruze, who directed it, and to the brain which produced the idea that a top-notch director might be the thing these adult stars need. On the evidence of these two pictures I should say that it quite definitely is. The story of “We’re All Gamblers” probably is no better than any of the stories Mr. Meighan has had in recent years. Certainly, when reduced to paper, it has its weak spots. But as Mr. Cruze tells it, with balanced sequences and that not quite evident restraint which this director exercises to such excellent advantage, it stands up as a first rate entertainment in every sense of the word. I am glad to see Meighan back in the good picture list. His row of bad breaks has been a thorn in the side of the business for quite a spell. Now that the way to keep him in good pictures seems fairly plain, I hope it will be followed with due assiduity. AND ANOTHER PARAMOUNT NOTHER Paramount picture (they seem to have been everywhere last week) contains Clara Bow and is called “Hula.” It also contains Clive Brook and some other actors, a yarn of a sort and a lot of mistakes. I should say, in fact, that the whole thing is just too bad. Perhaps Miss Bow, like meteoric successes of other years, does not fit readily into the lead roles of available manuscripts. Perhaps it is even difficult to whittle a conveyance to her measure; certainly it is if this picture is an example of such whittling. I believe, therefore, that it would be a good idea to have the young lady dash off a script for herself. If the spark which seems to be in her emanates from the thing we call genius, perhaps the same source would yield a fable which could be built up to usable proportions. The thing wrong with “Hula” seems not to be quite clear. Various people looking at it pronounce it bad for widely various reasons. Apparently it lacks anything to make it good and just possibly it lacks everything. It impresses me, as I said before, as a series of mistakes beginning with the one that occurred when production of it was decided upon. SEE (HEAR) CHIC SALE AVING gone to the Monroe to see “What Price Glory” and to hear Movietone, I was not prepared for “They’re Coming to Get Me,” a Movietone presentation by Mr. Chic Sale which I believe to be the funniest short feature I have seen in the past five years. As you know all about “What Price Glory” (and as there’s simply no words to describe a picture like that anyway) I’ll tell you about the comedy. This Sale fellow, as you know if you’ve heard him in person, is about the last word in polite burlesque. In this short feature (it must be about one reel) he conducts the services on a Sunday when the minister is ill. Aided by the Movietone, and by a cast that affords the necessary background, he achieves a type of comedy which is not to be seen on the screens or stages of the country. I believe he demonstrates more effectively than anyone else has done the possibilities of the contrivance which brings him within the reach of the wider public. OIL AND WATER EELING particularly unfeeling at this moment, my excellent and barely damaged cigar having rolled off my desk into an unmentionable receptacle, I call your attention to the fact that Publix and practically every important theatre outfit in the country have gone in for the so-called bandshow type of other-than-screen entertainment, abandoning frankly the attentuated attempt to merge screen and stage. Now all that remains to be accomplished is elimination of the bandshows and this ought not to take more than half a century. By that time pictures no doubt will be attractive enough — and theatres few enough — to constitute in themselves adequate box office attraction.