Exhibitors Herald and Moving Picture World (Oct-Dec 1928)

October 20, 1928 EXHIBITORS HERALD and MOVING PICTURE WORLD 51 w 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." "MORAS OF THE M ARISES" M R RICHARD DIX is, lest there be doubt of it, the star of "Moran of the Marines." That makes it, at least so far as the present writer is concerned, a good enough picture. It made it good enough, too, for the thousands — about five — who saw it with me at the Chicago theatre last week. And Mi;.* Ruth Elder is in it just enough so that you can reasonably mention her as among those present, if there be point in making such mention. As there must be, since there she is, and yet that isn't quite giving the girl a break either. She isn't any worse than lots of the actresses, and there isn't much for a leading woman to do in a Dix picture anyway. She does well enough that little there is. (If they'd left out the caption about flying the Atlantic, perhaps she'd not have been noticed.) The story of "Moran of the Marines" is in the familiar Dix pattern. Dix is the fast young man whose guardian wipes his hands of him. There is the cafe brawl, the jail scene, and then Dix has joined the marines for the purpose of getting to China, where the girl is going. A good deal of humor is mixed up in these early stretches, tapering off a little toward the end, where the melodrama — never a very real sort of melodrama, either — begins. The bad breaks, wherein Dix is courtmartialed and found guilty of kissing the commandant's daughter, are quietly disposed of. Then there is jockeying around in China until the damsel can be placed in what seems to be a not at all terrible jeopardy. This gives Dix the opportunity to spring to the rescue and after that it's only a couple of jumps to the clinch and the end. There isn't anything particularly good or particularly bad about "Moran of the Marines." I doubt that it will be the picture Dix mentions first to the grandchildren grouped about his knee when he's 70, but neither will it be closeted as the family skeleton. Aviation has very little to do with it, but enough to justify the billing of Miss Elder wherever she may be doped to draw extra dimes. "THE RIVER PIRATE" M R. VICTOR McLACLEN (when a guy's that big I always address him as Mister) is the works in "The River Pirate." "The River Pirate" is a picture about a river pirate who does all the wrong things so pleasantly as to T. O. Service make them seem right. I suppose this is very unorthodox. It is very entertaining. Some other people are in "The River Pirate," too. There's a detective who stands up pretty well alongside McLaglen, and there are some other folks, but the attention is always upon McLaglen and I know no better place to leave the attention at any time. The sheer size of the man, the swing of his arms and the glint of his eye, are enough to pick up even a bad picture and carry it over. And this isn't a bad picture; it is a good one. There's an epilogue, in which somebody tells what happened after the pictured story was told, and since I missed the beginning of the picture I don't know whether or not there was a prologue. This fellow may even have been the author. I'd have been better pleased if the picture had been continued that much further and the epilogue dispensed with, but it is all right for a novelty. "WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS" [ MAY have mentioned in this space that I have always considered "Tell It to the Marines" Lon Chaney's best picture. This for the reason that in it Chaney didn't make up. Whether I've mentioned it or not, the opinion is now revised. I consider "While the City Sleeps" Chaney's be-t picture. After all, he did have a marine uniform in the other picture. In this he works straight as to attire as well as character. He's a detective, a big city detective, and I think it's well nigh time somebody did a detective without making him funny. Chaney does so. The story of the picture is the sort of thing you expect. It has criminals, with all the trimmings lately attributed to the criminals of the bigger places, and it has the people who associate with criminals. It has their sweeties, and it has the detectives who seek to thwait the criminal or bring him to justice as the case and the need may be. But in this picture, perhaps in part because Chaney is so altogether human about it, the whole thing looks logical and reasonable and actual. It seems to impress the rest of the audience that way, too, for the portions accompanied by sneaky music were accompanied al-o by hushes, asides, nudges and the sort of manifestations which betoken an audience's ke n interest and intrinsic belief in the activities being pictured. Chaney is the detective. Anita Page is the girl who, as usual, he almost marries but not quite. I don't recall the name of the kid who, after Chaney has dragged him out of gangdom, does marry the young lady. It doesn't much matter, of course, for Chaney is the individual chiefly concerned at all times so far as the onlooker is concerned. The crime in the picture is, as stated, the usual gaudy thing. This time the chief criminal is an undertaker for the purposes of escaping detection. That's more or less new. Also, it offers a lot of kinks for the plot to get tied up in and interestingly extricated from. (Like, for instance, that sentence.) Also, for a change, the hero is opposed to crime with a good oldfashioned type of opposition such as seemingly hasn't been considered popular in recent months. Another distinguishing characteristic is the fact that these are criminals and not mere fellows who persist in selling liquor against the notorious amendment's wholly inadequate provisions. But I said all there is to say about "While the City Sleeps" when I said it was Chaney's best picture. Anybody that wants anything better than that is an idealist, a dreamer and more or less a damphool. "BEGGARS OF LIFE" I HOPE that I shall live so long as to learn why Paramount permitted the making of "Beggars of Life." If it were intended to show just how terrible an author Jim Tully is, which would be a highly commendable purpose but surely not worth all this investment, no better success could have been wished for. This is the dreariest, dullest, slowest, most monotonous and least interesting picture I have ever beheld under the Paramount trademark. (And in the days when they used to import English made product they had some pretty terrible stuff, too.) It is as ghastly, I should say, as Jim Tully. Not even a ghastly joke on him, either, but a ghastly tribute — apparently — to his ghastliness. No, I take back the first part of that preceding paragraph. I don't want to live long enough to know why they made it. But I do want to live to the day when billing, publicity, or at least a kindly word to us more or less professional viewers of pictures, will save me from sitting through such things. I suggest a sort of quarantine.