The Film Spectator (Mar-Dec 1928)

April 28, 1928 THE FILM SPECTATOR Page Thirteen Easy Go will not lose any friends for Dix. I do not quarrel with it so much for what it is as I do for what it might have been. * * * Looked Unpromising, But It Really Is Interesting You can imagine how I tried to side-step it when I was told that it was a six-reel picture made by some rich Santa Monica woman not connected with the film industry, that it was shot entirely in her home and that the leading part was played by a young miss who never before had stood in front of a motion picture camera. But I could not stall indefinitely and finally found myself and the six reels together in a projection room. I saw a mighty interesting picture. I have said many times in The Spectator that it is easy to make a good motion picture, and Sins of the Cradle rather goes to prove it. Mrs. Annie L. McDonald knew nothing whatever about how pictures were made, but she had an idea for a story and a beautiful house and garden that could be used as a locale for it. She vsrote the story, setting down one scene after another until she figured that she had told her story in a series of pictures that would be both beautiful and entertaining. She knew the kind of a girl she wanted for the leading part, but could not find just the right one among the many Hollywood professionals whom she interviewed. At no stage of the growth of the idea did she have the slightest notion of using her own fifteen-year-old daughter Ann in the picture, but one morning someone suggested that Ann be given a test — and Ann played the part. Mrs. McDonald was so loath to exploit her own daughter that Ann McDonald appears on the screen as Ann Preston. She gives an extraordinary performance, but that is not the feature of the production that impressed me most. Sins of the Cradle is a better motion picture than over half of those made by the big producing organizations, yet no one with real picture experience had anything to do with it until it was handed, after it was shot, to Tom Terris to edit. It is full of production value of the most approved movie kind. An example: We see an elaborate fountain in the center of a flower garden, sending a score of streams into the air to run through moonbeams before falling on a group of statuary of great artistic beauty. Suddenly the statuary comes to life — girls in bathing suits. Sins of the Cradle, however, is a deeply human picture. It tells of a foundling home which has a cradle in a bower to which unmarried mothers may come and leave the little ones whom the rest of the world apparently does not want. Ann plays the part of a foundling whom we follow through life until she finds that love has greater pulling power than the convent which it had been her intention to enter as a nun. It is a picture of tenderness, sympathy and humanity, and I am sixre that audiences anywhere would like it. * * * THE Spectator is gratified to see so much professional advertising coming to it voluntarily. We want all that we can get, but we have been devoting our attention to creating a medium that would do the advertiser good and have made no effort to get advertising by applying pressure. I flatter myself that the regular readers of The Spectator are convinced that no amount of advertising by an individual can affect the paper's opinion of the work of such individual. The Spectator advertising pages are valuable to those who buy them only to the extent that the editorial pages are honest. And the price of space is just as honest. The rate is high, but everyone who uses space pays it. The other night a prominent director told me that his manager had persuaded him not to advertise in The Spectator because the rate was too high. About four months ago this same manager told me that he would take a full page in every issue for one year if I would give him a reduction of twenty-five per cent, in price, but bill his clients for the full amount, handing the manager his LIEUT. E. H. ROBINSON Was My Most Valuable Aeronautical Assistant WM. WELLMAN CHARLES STUMAR CHIEF CINEMATOGRAPHER OF "UNCLE TOM'S CABIN" "THE COHENS AND KELLYS IN PARIS" "HAS ANYONE SEEN KELLY" "THE MICHIGAN KID" UNIVERSAL PICTURE CORPORATION VICTOR MILNER Qinematograp her For Paramount MADAME DA SILVA SCHOOL OF DANCING Madame Da Silva has been a stage dancer since the age of five and has a world reputation. 1606 Cahuenga Ave. Dancing does more than anything else to keep one young. Madame Da Silva instructs all her pupils personally. GRanite 3561