Hollywood Spectator (1931)

August 29, 1931 11 sion and actions reveal to us clearly what is in his mind, thus enabling the camera to assume its proper place in the art of the screen. Some speeches, of course, are used to carry the story, but I don’t think there are any more than there were titles in the average silent picture. Also in a technical sense Bad Girl approaches perfection. Before I captured the gentle person who goes to see motion pictures with me, she was a trained nurse, and she assures me that the hospital sequence in this picture is accurate down to the smallest detail. Those pillows are exactly right,” she whispered while we were looking at Sally Eilers in a hospital bed. Borzage has an uncanny knack of getting superb performances from the members of his cast when he is given material for which he has a sympathetic feeling. I never even heard of Dunn before, but I presume he is from the stage. It takes only one picture to make a picture actor out of him when he has the advantage of the Borzage direction. He is a likable boy whose personality will gain him friends all over the world. When he goes to the great doctor in the scene I have mentioned, and for the first time becomes articulate and pours out all that is in his mind and heart, he gives a magnificent exhibition of emotional acting. If you can watch that scene and speak within five minutes after it is over, you are hard-boiled. ▼▼ The FIRST time I saw Sally Eilers on the screen I raved over her and predicted great things for her. I did the same thing with Janet Gaynor. Janet came along in Seventh Heaven and did credit to my prophetic powers, and now along comes Sally in Bad Girl and further enhances my standing as a guesser. I am grateful to Frank Borzage for his wise piloting of both girls. Sally’s performance is intelligent. The wife is a rather foolish girl and Sally gets inside the character and makes her lovable and understandable. Of almost as much importance to the story as the two principals is the kind-hearted and worldly-wise girl played by Minna Gombell. Her performance is a delight. Claude King plays the famous doctor. It is just a bit, but when you see Dunn’s big scene in the doctor’s office, take note of the large contribution made to it by the doctor, who merely sits, smiles, and says little. But only a really fine actor could do these little things so well. There is another little bit done beautifully by a character actress whose name I don’t know. As an incident in establishing the character of the tenement house in which Sally Eilers lives, the woman comes down the stairs, passes Sally and Dunn and goes to a phone on the wall. Apparently it is her sister to whom she talks and whom she acquaints with the fact that their mother has died. The capable actress to whom the bit was assigned makes it stand out as one of the many great moments in the picture. Exhibitors everywhere should insist upon getting Bad Girl. It is a triumph for the F ox production forces. CREATOR OF DISTINCTIVE DESIGNS FORREST SEABURY'S De Luxe Awning Company 6404 Yucca Street, at Cahuenga Hollywood, California GR 4440 AWNINGS OF EVERY DESCRIPTION A Magnifies nt Flop NO OTHER picture turned out by Paramount in quite a long time has met with such a chorus of adverse criticism as was accorded The Magnificent Lie, which Berthold Viertel directed and in which Ruth Chatterton starred. I read a lot of reviews of it and not one of them treated it kindly. But here and there something in it was mentioned favorably by a critic, and when I had taken the reviews as a whole I made the interesting discovery that while the picture generally was condemned, each of the parts that composed it had met with someone’s approval. This made me want to see it, which I did when it came to my most convenient neighborhood house. Magnificent Lie is a terrible picture because it was made from a cruel and inhuman story, a disgusting and heartless narrative of the baiting of a fine young man who was blinded by his war injuries and whose clean love for his memory of a woman whom he thought worthy of it, was made the subject of the coarse jokes of the most despicable set of characters ever assembled in one screen offering. It is the kind of picture that makes one mad, that irritates to the point of nausea, and which outrages one’s sense of decency. How anyone on the Para / HELENE IRENE CURTIS l^hxxtn^xn^lxxz (Kti STUDIO OF DISTINCTIVE PORTRAITURE 7100 HOLLYWOOD BLVD. AT LA BREA GLADSTONE 3969