The Film Daily (1918)

Thursday, November 14, 1918 ■* DAILY Baby Marie and Pickanniny Get More Chance In This. Meller Held Down Baby Marie Osborne in "MILADY O' THE BEANSTALK" Diando — Pathe Dist. DIRECTOR William Bertram AUTHOR Elizabeth Burbridge SCENARIO BY Clara S. Beranger CAMERAMAN Tom Middleton AS A WHOLE Cute kid stuff dominates action with meller sufficiently subdued. STORY Quite elementary but provided skeleton for cute kid stuff. DIRECTION Gave sufficiently good atmosphere to satisfy and played up cute bits that will carry film. PHOTOGRAPHY Ordinary straight stuff LIGHTINGS No attempts for effects; frequently too uniform. CAMERA WORK Good straight shots STAR Baby Marie cute but pickanniny steals scenes. SUPPORT Ellen Cassidy pretty; Connolly satis= factory hero. EXTERIORS. .A few good shots; generally acceptable INTERIORS Rather ordinary but will pass DETAIL Acceptable; some cute kid bits CHARACTER OF STORY Nothing to offend LENGTH OF PRODUCTION 4,737 feet ONE of the reasons this will be quite a bit more popular thau many of the Baby Marie films have been, is that the meller incidents in the plot have been very much subdued. Unfortunately, in most of the little Mary Sunshine productions in the past year, the elementary plots have carried entirely too .much meller, with attention centered upon crude activities of the grownups, rather than upon the kiddies. In this, there is a semblance of a plot, if you care to call the elementary skeleton which they use by that dignified name. Really, the picture is better off because the plot is slight. When folks go in to see Baby Marie, they go in to see cute kid stuff and they don't care much about drammer, if seeing drammer means that they must miss a lot of cute kid tricks. The "Jack and the Beanstalk" idea was brought into the story every so often, after it had been introduced by means of a dream in which Baby Marie saw herself as Jack, with flashes registering the visit to the giant's castle by way of the beanstalk, etc., etc., this being the underlying incident of the plot which was tied into the modern story by means of showing a reason why Baby Marie would climb the fire escape to hero's room and thus be able to bring together hero and her mother. The funny little pickanniny who has worked in so many Baby Marie films cleans up every scene in which he appears in this. He is certainly an unsually clever youngster and takes direction perfectly, seeming to have a true instinct for the proper pantomime and expression. Towards the last of this they gave us the good old situation of Baby Marie seriously injured with mother needing money to have an operation which will save the child. Hero, who has become a prize fighter, has just agreed never to fight again, but, of course, with $1,000 needed to save the chee-ild, he promptly breaks his promise, wins the fight, is able to pay for the operation, and, of course, secures the forgiveness of Baby Marie's mother. Finishing with this time-worn sequence, they take the bad taste out of your mouth on the end by a little comedy showing the principals happy, with Baby Marie playing with her pets, an Airdale dog, a cat with kittens and some ducks. Since most fans will be willing to forgive the lack of genuine dramatic strength in this story, and the use of old situations, because there is so much cute kid stuff with Baby Marie and the little coon, I think that you can consider this a pretty safe audience-satisfying offering. Make It Clear That This Is Comedy And You Can Get Business. It will Satisfy The Box Office Analysis for the Exhibitor I have been told by exhibitors from many sections that Baby Marie has had a genuine pull at the box office. Just how much the rather crude melodramatic offerings in which she has appeared in the past year have injured that pulling power in your community, you must know better than anyone else. This much is certainly true in so far as this particular production is concerned, you can safely tell them that this is a comedy with much more attention given to the kid stuff than in the recent Baby Marie offerings. I would make this a particular issue of all my advertising because I am afraid that many of those regulars who really enjoy Baby Marie's fun-making, have become rather peeved over the fact that the producers have subordinated her work to that of artificial actors and actorines who went through the motions of crude meller. Certainly anyone who has seen the Baby Marie offerings in the past year will remember this funny little coon, Sambo, and it seems to me that you will be justified in playing him up as much as you do Baby Marie. I would use stills of these two in all advertising and promise your folks that they will thoroughly enjoy the fun-making of these youngsters. The "Jack and the Beanstalk" incident is not a big part of this story and while you can feel safe in saying that the fairy tale is registered in a dream, I would be careful that they do not get the idea that this is a costume fairy tale offering.