Exhibitors Herald and Moving Picture World (Jan-Mar 1928)

52 EXHIBITORS HERALD and MOVING PICTURE WORLD March 10, 1928 SERVICE TALKS Incorporated in this department of Exhibitors Herald, which is a department containing news, information and gossip on current productions, is the Moving Picture World department, "Through the Box Office Window" "THE KING OF KINGS" H AVING seen "The King of Kings," I am in the market for a new job. Not — please understand— that I do not wish to write about Mr. DeMille's picture, but because trade and lay critics (with whom I perforce must permit myself to be classified so long as I occupy this chair) have made such asses of themselves in their comments concerning it. Since, obviously, I cannot endow these brethren with brains, taste nor intelligence, the next best thing for me to do is to desert the ranks. I repeat, I am in the market for a new job. "The King of Kings" is, as you must be aware, a wholly sincere representation of the life of Christ. As you must be aware, too, it was manufactured without regard for expense and with every regard for accuracy. The research, alone, ran up an expense adequate to the production of three or four good movies. I do not recall the total cost of the picture, but I know that it is unimportant. The finished product is a tremendous thing, a celluloid trans6cription of a record that has endured through innumerable translations, interpretations and abridgements to stand, as it has always stood, as the most important document in the world. My fellow-writers (I blush a little as I write it) have written pieces about the acting, the makeup of some of the players, the subtitling, the photography, even the continuity. It is even recorded, apparently with fact background, that someone is suing someone else for plagiarizing the plot! And — I expect — a time will come when the box office value of the creation is duly embalmed in precious percentages. None of these things, of course, will have eventual bearing upon the importance of the work. Mr. DeMille, whose cream-pufferies I have ridiculed as merrily as the next writer when occasion seemed to demand, should not permit himself to be bothered by these barkings and bleatings. His should be the satisfaction of a worker whose life has been marked by at least one triumph, one all but superhuman accomplishment. It may be decades before acknowledgement is freely given — indeed, it may never come— but the work is there, in all its tremendous simplicity and seriousness, for such as may be able to comprehend. Regrettable, but unimportant, if these be few. I have written nothing, and I will write nothing, about "The King of Kings" as a picture. I would be as quick to complain that the sun is round instead of square or octagonal, By T. O. SERVICE that the Atlantic is green when I should prefer it blue or that Lindbergh'-s plane bore an advertising insignia. "The King of Kings" is, to me and very plainly to those who saw it when I did at the Erlanger, a complete and satisfying fulfillment of the titular promise. "FEEL MY PULSE" ^ HIS, to my way of thinking, is the last word in comedies. It is slapstick, farce, burlesque and straight humor in about the most pleasant combination of equal and unequal portions that I've laid weary eye to in months. Now, at my dusty typewriter with recuperating chillblains reminding me now and again of the sudden cold snap that has taken Chicago, I laugh again at the gyrations of the gyrating Bebe Daniels and the wisecracks given her by a wisecracking captionist. It's all a howl. "Feel My Pulse" is one of those naturals which always make one wonder why nobody thought of making such a picture before. It starts with the familiar antiseptically reared daughter of wealth. It proceeds to place her in a supposed sanitarium that is really operated as a base for rum-runners. It continues by modernizing "Over the River Charlie" and a lot of other good old medicine show acts and finishes in a hand-to-hand battle by the entire company a la Sennett, Chaplin and the rest of the slapstickers. Miss Daniels gets into action a little later than usual, perhaps because there is more good comic stuff than usual in the early part of the picture. It would not do, of course, to tell you what all this stuff is. That would spoil your enjoyment of it. And — though I'm not one to make predictions or build threats upon them— if you don't get a laugh out of this comedy you have no business looking for laughter in films. I'm becoming tremendously fond of the Daniels pictures. Each one seems better, funnier, sprightlier and freer. I can barely recall that (lie star is the n n one who used to do dramatic things and weren't they terrible? — in a less enlightened era. Give her more liberty, say I, and by all means increase the pay check of the person who writes her captions. I don't know who deserves the greater credit, but there is enough for both and to spare. "THE LATEST FROM PARIS" I T'S good to see Norma Shearer back at work in "The Latest from Paris." (Which is another way of saying that she shouldn't have been put in "The Student Prince" in the first place). Back in the prominence to which her unquestioned ability entitles her, she makes a romping comedy out of a cloak-and-suit piece that has bits enough of this, that and the other thing to warrant the previously unanalyzed pronouncement "it has everything." That about says it. Miss Shearer is, this time, a traveling saleslady for a ladies' wear concern that might as well be Potash & Perlmutter. As which she meets and defeats a rival drummer, with whom she promptly falls in love, and after that there is a Christmas Eve scene reminiscent of "Welcome Stranger" and a Dock of other scenes reminiscent — but not importantly so — of various other successful plots. All of which adds up to total a wholly pleasing, humorous, human, sprightly, colorful, comic and consummate hour of entertainment. I like Miss Shearer in this lighter mood. She doesn't seem to me to be constructed for drama. She fits exactly into the picture when the picture is built for amusement purposes. This one is — she does — and I vote for as many more of the same as they can find time to manufacture in the daily round of business at M G M. HEALTH DEPARTMENT J# C. JENKINS is hereby notified that his remedy for chillblains, which reads a bit intricately, will be given full and adequate trial when (and if) the formula submitted by my good friend, C. A. Miller, has been tried and found wanting. (At this writing — after three applications — Mr. Miller's panacea bids fair to accomplish the desired result. Thanks.) PrINCESS PAT (otherwise the w. g. daughter) has practically forgotten the Whooping Cough business, but Pagaliacci (otherwise the family parrot) has picked up the knack of wrooping and persists in reminding Pat how it's done. The Head of the House (slang for yours truly — and it really doesn't mean anything) is teaching the bird how to yodel (no admission during lessons) with a view to breaking the Princess of the whooping habit. Woe, of course, is all of us.