The Film Daily (1919)

Sunday, January 12, 1919 ife£k ILY Decidedly Inferior Offering. Hands Out Laughs But That's All Harry Devereaux in "A SUCCESSFUL FAILURE" Triangle. DIRECTOR Arthur Rosson. ASSISTANT DIRECTOR Dick Rosson. SUPERVISED BY Allan Dwan. AUTHOR Robert Shirley. CAMERAMAN • Not Credited. AS A WHOLE Hokus pokus comedy meller contains laughs, but altogether unimpressive. . . . STORY Ten-Twent.-Thirt. type meller centered about the "waluable poipers." DIRECTION ....•• Dragged this out unnecessarily and just let things happen by virtue of carrying on the plot. PHOTOGRAPHY Ordinary. LIGHTINGS Uniform; no attempt for effects. CAMERA WORK Just ordinary straight stuff. STAR Attempted to get laughs and succeeded. SUPPORT Winifred Allen cute shero; others just acceptable. EXTERIORS Just fair. DETAIL Didn't worry them. CHARACTER OF STORY Harmless and not to be taken seriously. LENGTH OF PRODUCTION .... About 5.000 feet. Holy Cat! When will some folks begin to realize that it's the 20th Century we're living in, instead of the pre-historic ages when people didn't know nothin'. Present day audiences will not stand for this inferior type of "movie" without kicking, and it never gets any further than tending to injure the general fillum business. Here we get the situation of the Chief of Police withholding from the leader of a Reform Committee, some "waluable poipers." The Chief is helpless to convict him since reform leader witnessed a shooting some ten years prior, in which the chief shot another man over a gambling fight. llu: reform leader engages Harry Devereaux, un successful lawyer, to get the "poipers" and convict the chief grafter. Harry is in love with Winifred Allen, the Chief's daughter, and doesn't want to be personally involved in the affair, so he steps out of it by putting the Mayor on the job. Here we find the Mayor entering upon the scene in which he actually sees the Chief collecting grafted money, and they pull the title: "For the honor of our city, I will overlook this now, but never again." Sounds plausible, doesn't it? After dragging out some more footage in which wild chases and holdups and shooting figure largely, we get the man who was supposed to have been shot, coming back from the dead, as a secret service agent, who has the "goods" on the Reform Leader, in reality a dangerous spy. This, in order to furnish a way out for the chief. Throughout the offering, we get much incidental love stuff between Harry Devereaux and Winifred Allen, and the final sequence brings about the inevitable clutch. This thing is decidedly "movie" like and painfully inferior. They pull a lot of stuff that never even borders plausibility. For instance, there's a bit where the lawyer substitutes the door of his office with that of his artist friend's next door. He goes to the (doors, and one two three, removes them from their hinges, without tools, just as easily as one would lift a pencil from a desk. He was a lawyer, mind you, not a carpenter. Harry Devereaux has a rather pleasing personality and is really the one redeeming feature of this production, but quite frequently, he over-reached in his attempts for laughs. Winifred Allen is pretty and appealing, but hasn't much to do outside of flirting with and smiling at Harry Devereaux. The others were just acceptable, nothing more. iiiiiiiiniiiiiiii ifiiiiiiiiiiiiiiifliiniiiii iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiniiiiii 11111111! wmKmmmmmumamHmMmmmmmnmmHmm^wmmmm^ "The Pacific Coast is the Logical Place to make Release Prints" The Sanborn Laboratories, Inc. | =3 is the logical place on the Coast to do your release print work. We control exclusive rights on the Handscheigh Color Process. Super excellency is the | reason for our making release prints for Douglas Fairbanks, Authors Photoplay Co. (Anna Luther Releases), "Smiling Bill" Parsons Comedies and the sample print work of at least ninety per cent, of the big productions made on the West Coast. ■ SANBORN LABORATORIES Culver City, Los Angeles, Cal. wmni!iiii«umnn«ii!iii!iiiiii iiiii iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiihiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii iiiiiiiimimwiwiiii™