Exhibitors Herald World (Jan-Mar 1929)

February 16, 1929 EXHIBITORS HERALD-WORLD 65 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." MORE ABOUT ME, I CONTINUE to grow in unpopularity — which is popularity by its maiden name — as witness the following from F. Stanley, Holton Amusement Company, Holton, Kansas, in Mr. Stanley's letter to my esteemed colleague, the editor of the "What the Picture Did for Me" department. "I note your advice to Mrs. Grace Dinsmore, to read Service Talks by all means, as he's entertaining, but contrary to his opinion his comments don't mean much. I fully agree with you since I read his review on 'The Wedding March" in the January 26 issue of the HERALDWORLD. T. 0. calls Mr. Von Stroheim an artist. Well, he certainly is, for any man that can spend as much as they claim he did on this picture and get even one critic to say it is entertainment is an artist all right, but that is not what the patrons or the small town exhibitors that have run It say he is. "T. O. says, T don't care if I never see better entertainment.' But I hope I never have to run another one as poor entertainment, for I don't like to have people walk out and give me that nasty look. In this instance T. 0. reminds me of the soldier that the whole army was out of step with but they sent him to the guard house for it. "I will continue to read Service Talks because he is usually right as well as entertaining." Now that, ladies and gentlemen, is what I call a pretty sentiment. Mr. Stanley didn't like 'The Wedding March," as I did, and yet he refrains from calling me names or accusing me of taking bribes. His line about the soldier out of step is no less than classic. And he concludes by saying I'm not merely entertaining but u>ually right. This is almost too much — for first is as much as anyone ought to hope for — but I thank him none the less. Before leaving the subject, however, I must add a remark or two about "The Wedding March." Frankly, I don't know how much was spent on it or how much was reported spent. I don't even know what was left out of the completed print. That may be the reason that I liked it. At any rate, I speak only of the completed product and it is no more my business than it is the public's if Mr. Von Stroheim and his associates spent a million dollars or so on other things. If we must look at the expenditures within the trade, why not reflect, as no one seems to, that the millions of dollars expended on Mr. Von Stroheim's follies have By T. O. Service brought the industry newspaper publicity worth many times the amount? Of course this is a bit hard on the people who do the spending, but that's another and a quite individual matter. I have not heard Paramount complaining. "CAPTAIN LASH'' I REMEMBER no more entertaining picture than '"A Girl in Every Port," wherein Victor McLaglen was a sturdy seaman with ideas about women — many women. And I expected to see something like it in "Captain Lash," which is almost identically billed. But it isn't there. The picture is good enough, I suppose, but it isn't better than "A Girl in Every Port," and I thought it should be. My error. In "Captain Lash" Mr. McLaglen is again a seaman, a stoker«to be exact, and a good one to be complete. He falls hard for a gal who uses him to smuggle jewels into Singapore and survives it. Most of the players are good and the settings, etc., are excellent. I suspect I liked "A Girl in Every Port" too well to like "Captain Lash" as well as I should. (I seem always to be getting caught in these traps of my own making and I don't wonder that Mr. Stanley and other good showmen who try to make sense of my paragraphs find it difficult. They don't mean a great deal more to me — and I write them.) "THE DOCTOR'S SECRET'' If you've been in the business >ome little while you will recall a Paramount picture called "Half An Hour." Elsie Ferguson was in it and I believe William De Mille made it. The Chicago print was brutally butchered by the censors but I have the impression that it was a good picture and did quite well in most cities. Well, William De Mille made "The Doctor's Secret" and it is "Half An Hour" with the conversation retained and it has Ruth Chatterton in Miss Ferguson's role. It also has Robert Edeson, H. B. Warner and John Loder. And it just couldn't be bad with that ca>t (in fact it is excellent), but it plays the devil with my personal estimates of these players. To wit: I have always considered Elsie Ferguson a better actress than Ruth Chatterton, but Miss Chatterton in this is perfect. I have always considered H. B. Warner a splendid actor, on stage or screen, but in this he gives me a severe attack of migraine (high-hat talk for headache). I have always considered Robert Edeson excellent and he is excellent in this. Mr. Loder is new to me and I think I'll like him better in fatter assignments; his chief business in this is to die. But the thing that really puzzles me is the audience reaction to the picture. I saw it at the Chicago, which has as good a clientele for its 5,000-seat capacity as any theatre in the world, and many of the folks laughed at the wrong places. I suppose these were, of course, the wrong folks. What puzzles me is that people who sit and thrill and weep and so forth when Miss Chatterton emotes at the Studebaker or another stage playhouse giggle when she does the same thing at the Chicago. As I say, this puzzles me, wherefore I leave it to others to worry about. I think the condition will not long prevail. "A WOMAN OF AFFAIRS'' M RS. SERVICE was ill during the year that Michael Aden's "The Green Hat" was published and so a copy of it came into our home and eventually into my hands. (Maybe I should nuntion here that Mrs. Service recovered, although I doubt that "The Green Hat" had anything to do with it.) And so that is the novel I read in that year — was in 1927? — and so, having read the book, and having been informed that "A Woman of Affairs" i not "The Green Hat," I went to see the picture quite disarmed. Now, having seen it, I can report that "A Woman of Affairs" is not the "Green Hat" but I should become a near-beer enthusiast tomorrow if the near-brewers could come even half so near to the original. Greta Garbo is the Diana of the picture — the Iris March of the book — and a complete company of equally good or better players does the rest of the work. Mr. Gilbert is among those present, although not so actively as usual, and I suppose that will make the ladies glad. Lest it have a similar effect upon the earnest showmen who say they care what I write on this page, I utter here the news that I have changed my opinion of Miss Garbo and now consider her an eminently capable actress. This ought to convince Mr. Stanley that he was entirely correct in his remark identifying me as "the soldier that the whole army was out of step with but they put him in the guard house for it."