Exhibitors Herald World (Jan-Mar 1930)

March I, 1950 EXHIBITORS HERALD-WORLD 39 J. C. Jenkins — His Colyum NELIGH, NEB. DEAR HERALD-WORLD: If we didn't register some kind of a squawk in this Colyum the readers (if there are any) might think that something had gone wrong. Wishing to be regular, we are going to enter a protest against our old friend, Thomas 0. Service, allowing others to edit the "Service Talks" department. We have become so accustomed to turning to that department as soon as we rip off the cover of our favorite magazine that when we find he has shirked his duty and unloaded the responsibility onto others, naturally we get a little peeved about it. Possibly, being shut in here and unable to get out and mingle with the boys over the territory, and having to wrap our Adonis form around a radiator, and having one hand and arm in bandages and smelling of horse liniment, which was occasioned by too great a pressure of steam in April Shower's radiator, we may have suffered some ill effect on our angelic disposition. Ordinarily we could kiss a baby (anywhere between 19 and 30) with that ease and grace peculiar to Will Rogers, but just now we would relish a fight, bare-handed, with six hungry wildcats and would bet our last dolar on results. That's the way we are feeling right now. Not but what the boys who wrote the reviews for Tommy in the current issue did an excellent job, but the fact that Tommy ran in a picture of Miss Zasu Pitts saved the department from being a flop, as far as we are concerned, and saved Tommy from getting a thorough lambasting. He may have it coming to him, anyhow. We hope Miss Zasu sees this and we hope she can appreciate our disappointment in not meeting her when we were in Hollywood recently, which was entirely due to Hodges' indifference, superinduced by his jealousy. We don't wish to be understood as criticizinz that department, as it appears in the current issue, but when anyone steps in and tries to fill Tommy's shoes they've got to have dogs like lumberjacks, that's all! * * * Would-be critics have panned "Love — Live — Laugh," a Fox production, with George Jessel and Lila Lee. Would-be critics have panned a lot of other pictures and we have just about come to the point where we are going to make a strenuous effort to see every picture that fails to measure up to their particular standard of entertainment. We may not know a good picture. Pictures may be classed along with a lot of other things we don't know, but when Mrs. H. J. Longaker of Alexandria, Minn., gives us a piece of her huckleberry pie and anyone tries to tell us that it isn't good pie and that we don't know good pie, they are going to start a helluvan argument with us. Perhaps the reason this picture has not received favorable comment is because of the lack of sufficient jazz music to give it "pep," and the absence of a chorus of "bathing beauties" girded with surcingles to give it "spice" and "class." We are not going to give you an extended review of this picture, for we are not a reviewer of pictures, and we are going to say as little about it as we can and yet give our opinion as to its merits. Summed up in a few words, we look at it this way: If George Jessel and Lila Lee never make a better picture, or if they never make another one, they are entitled to have their pictures hung in the hall of fame alongside of a lot of others who are supposed to have made dramatic history. There isn't a key on this typewriter that has a star; if there was, we'd run in four of 'em right here as our estimate of this picture. When people whose business it is to review pictures and who are drawing good United States money for that service, will give this picture a third, or even a secondary rating, it is proof conclusive to us that there are people in these United States who are crazier than a bedbug, but we are not saying who they are. Elmer Gailey says we are crazier than that. There has never been a better singer before the microphone than George Jessel. There has never been a person before the camera that could play the part he played in this picture better than he played it, and this goes for Lila Lee also. We saw the picture twice last night and are going to see it again tonight, and if you want any further proof that we like the picture you are wanting too much. We are going to watch "Service Talks" and see what our old friend, Thomas O. Service, says of this picture. If he roasts it we are going to go before the Bughouse Commission and have our gourd examined. If "Love — Live — Laugh" is not a good picture, then we've been voting the wrong ticket all of our life. We have not been appointed as a judge, and having never heard more than three or four hundred talking devices, we are probably not qualified to speak, but if the Moon theatre at Neligh, Neb., is not entitled to receive the HERALD-WORLD plaque for its sound installation, then we can get as much enjoyment out of hearing Uncle Leazer's sow squeal for swill as we could out of the Boston symphony orchestra. There would be no use wasting music on us. * * * We lost two dollars today on a dog race. A couple of dogs were chasing an alley cat down the street and ran the cat up a tree. When the race started we told a fellow we'd bet him two bucks on the black mongrel and he took the bet and the little potbellied skyoodle beat him to the tree. After the race was over we felt like Rastus did when he went home from the county fair and said to Mandy, "Mandy, ah dun lose dem fo' bits on dat Coolidge boss what you dun give me diss monnin." And Mandy said, "What you all mean 'bout dat Coolidge hoss, Rastus?" And Rastus replied, "Why, I dun place yo' money on dat hoss what didn't choose to run." * « « If they don't stop making these pictures better and better all the while it is going to throw us out of a job, for unless we can find something to squawk about we wont be able to fill this Colyum. Last Sunday and Monday night we saw "Untamed," an M G M picture, with Joan Crawford, Robert Montgomery and Ernest Torrence, and we sat through three showings of it from Alpha to Omega and tried to find something we could kick about and couldn't. The only place in it that seemed to show any bad taste was when Joan put her arms around Ernest's neck and kissed him, when there were a lot of nice looking young fellows in the next room. When they will entwine their arms around their necks and kiss a couple of old gazabos like Ernest Torrence and Will Rogers, it makes us wonder if the girls didn't overlook a real bet when we were in Hollywood for a couple of months last fall. If some casting director will give us a part to play in a picture with Irene Rich or Louise Fazenda or PoUy Moran, we will agree to play it for nothing and board ourself and that ought to be fair enough. And yet they are paying these birds real money for that! * * * That lump on the top of our dome in the picture in the Northeast comer of this Colyum isn't natural. It's the after-effects of a rolling pin when we couldn't find the keyhole. J. C. JENKINS, The HERALD-WORLD Man. P. S.— The HERALD-WORLD COVERS the field like an April shower.