Motion Picture News (Sep - Oct 1926)

1006 Motion P i c f u re N c iv s "Should Husbands Pay?" (Pathe-Hal Roach — Two Reels) {Reviewed by Paul Thompson) THIS is a gratuitous question; the married ones say. they do anyway whether they should or not. However, that is a subject for the international economics conference, held annually at Williams College, Massachusetts, and not for a family (among other things) trade motion picture magazine, such as this. The characters in this picture pay and plenty, for, F. Richard Jones, the director, insists, as most of his ilk do, that his players shall go the limit to win approbation for himself from the producers and money for the latter from the exhibitors. This piece should do both. The piece features Jimmy Finlayson, who is supported by Vivian Oakland. Martha Sleeper, Anders Randolph, Tyler Brooke, Charlotte Mineau and Anita Garvin. All who -wish may see them on the release. September 5th. Jimmy is a reformer and in court saves bis neighbor, Tyler, accused of flirting, from jail by promising to act as his conservator-ofmorals for a month. They have not been out of the courtroom five minutes before they arc both tangled up with a lady in distress whom they try to help across a puddle-filled street. Almost as many newspaper photographers _ as are employed in New York on the tabloids. The Daily Neivs, Mirror, and Graphic, miraculously are on the job. photographing the reformer in the most compromising positions and situations. Given that premise write your own comedy after the wife has seen the pictures reproduced in the paper. Before the end is reached the police court judge, his wife, and seemingly every man's wife or every woman's husband ' is mixed up in the plot. Certainly, marathons are part of any well-regulated Hollywood "daily dozen" exercise program. "Morning Judge" (Red Seal — "Carrie" Series— Two Reels) (Revietved by Harold Flavin) THIS, the first of a new series of comedies produced by Max Fleischer based on the adventures of a chorus girl, is a mildly amusing effort of the situation type of funfilm. Carrie and her company put on their show in a hick town and are arrested for performing a too realistic hula-hula dance. Due to Carrie's ability as a vamp the company is released by the local judge, who has a penchant for pretty girls, but, as they are leaving town they are rearrested by the judge's son, a police officer, and are hauled back to court for sentence. In the meantime the judge's wife, a militant type, learns of hubby's defection, visits the court while the case is being tried and interrupts the hearing to chastise the judge. During this interlude the son proposes to Carrie and is accepted, so all ends well except for the judge, who has been "beaten" on all sides. Peggy Shaw handles the role of Carrie capably. Flora Finch is excellent as the judge's wife. Sumniary — Will probably prove fair entertainment for patrons of the small houses. Not for sophisticated audiences. "The Fourth Alarm" (Pathe-Hal Roach— Two Reels) iRevicived by Paul Thompson) "/^UR G.'\N(]" as ■ firemen : can't you just v^ imagine even before seeing the picture its possibilities? Well, they are realized in one of the best of the recent releases of what has become one of the classic gems of the screen. Playing around a firehouse, as what kid would not delight to do, they decide to form their own department. Everything is there: makeshif; uniforms, the dormitory where the juvenile firefighters sleep, the pole for descent to the floor where the apparatus is housed, this equipment with goats and a mule substituted for regulation horses or auto fire engines, hook and ladder and hose carts, etc. Also there is a fire patrol which, discovering a fire in a barrel of pitch for a house under construction, turns in the alarm. Then ensues the awakening (?) of the brave firemen and their start for and arrival at the fire. Then a real fire where the regulation adult firemen are engaged. Shunted away from this because they are so much under foot and in the way, they discover a fire has broken out in the rear that threatens to destroy a chemist's laboratory where T. N. T. powder and other explosives are stored. These they remove to safety while battling the fire themselves and thus save the situation. It is one of the cleverest things Hal Roach and his youthful Thespians have done in a long time. There is no question about the hilarious reception which will be accorded the piece when it is thrown on the screen. That goes double for every youngster and every adult who has the slightest semblance of humor in his composition. H' "My Kid" ( Educational-J uvenile Comedy — Two Reels ) (Reviewed by Paul Thompson) IT is uncanny how some of the juvenile actors and actresses of the screen do the work they do before the camera. It is not merely a question of following the director's commands, because he can be within a few feet of his cast and still be out of the camera range. It is not the physical action which they go through but the facial phases that get me. Youngsters from two years up act with the assurance and aplomb of their elders. And they do not spoil it by appearing self-conscious or smart-Alecky. There are any number of juvenile thespians to whom this praise is due, possibly starting with the widely known "Our Gang" and including "Big Boy" Wilson. This particular one of the "Big Boy" series is delicious. His nose out of joint because of the presence in the household of a baby he revolts and runs away. He pals up with a Knight of the Road and they hit the ties together. A reward being offered for the return of the child there ensues a conflict between sheriff and constable to claim the same. A donkey is responsible for the return of the prodigal. Entertaining, whimsical, convincing and any other laudatory adjectives you wish to use, is "My Kid." "Pests" (Pathe-Fables— One Reel) . MOVING pictures are invariably signs of the times, whether the pictures are news-reels, features, comedies, dramas or fables. So it is quite logical to find that the next Fable offering deals with prize fighting. To raise money needed for some reason or other Farmer Al trains for and enters a prize fi.ght. The training and the fight of a Dempsey or a Tunney are carefully and amusingly burlesqued. Instead of a human being h'armer Al's opponent proves to be a gorilla. The latter is finally knocked out by a pop bottle thrown by a spectator. It is good fun, never failing to be amusing, with action from start to finish. Oh, yes, now I remember why the fight was dragged in. It was because the mouse hero or villain, all dependent on the point of view, needs the purse to bribe his sweetheart's young brothers to stay away while he pursues his courtship with no spectators. That is as good an excuse as any for the comedv fight. — PAUL THOMPSON. "For the Love of Pete" (Bray-Hot Dog Cartoon — One Reel) THIS is one of Walter Lang's effortspatterned after those which feature an artist and one or more of his inkwell creation? —and it's done in first rate shape. I^ng is not only a good cartoonist but a pretty good actor as well, .^s to the story, it's all about the loss of the cartoonist's trousers. It's an amusing noyeltv and good program filler. — EDW. G. JOHNSTON. "The Steeplechase" I Fox-Imperial Comedy — Two Reels) ( Reviewed by Paul Thompson ) 'ERE the title of the picture really has ' something to do with the picture, which does not always happen. A Southern colonel has an entry in an important steeplechase race and has a famous jockey coming to ride his entry. A bunch of crooked gamblers, including the colonel's own trainer, kidnap the boy on his arrival. His place is taken against his will by a patent medicine vendor, Lige Conley, who is virtually catapaulted into the saddle. Knowing little or nothing of riding he is unhorsed several times, yet crosses the line a winner, carried to victory in the mouth of the sapient horse. One feels that the race, to make possible the many and varied contretemps of the patentmedicine vending jockey in the course of the event, is like Tennyson's brook — it is going on forever. He wins the colonel's daughter also because there seems to be a lamentable absence of acceptable suitors for her hand in the small town where she lives. I suppose this proves the truth of Kipling's assertion about the "colonel's lady and Judy O'Grady being sisters" underneath the skin you love to touch. The piece is amusing but hardly intended for metropolitan consumption, yet It may score in that area as well as in the hinterland. THE CAST Lige Conley Gladys McConnell, Frederick Sullivan, Stanley Blystone, William Fletcher and Frank Marshan"""' ^^ '^"' Supervised by Ueorge Sumwary—Ammmg action-full comedv filled with "rough-house." "Hoboken to Hollywood" (Pathe-Mack Sennett — Two Reels) (Reviewed by Paul Thompson) POR prospective automobile tourists from t-l^^f Atlantic Seaboard, or even from the Middle West, I would hardly recommend this comedy. It would discourage them and then when they arrived in California, instead of the perpetual sunshine which thev have been led to expect, they might have the experience of Billy Bevan. Vernon Dent, Thelma Hall and Leonore Summers (in the film) and encounter a downpour. I doubt if they will permit the picture to be shown in California, or, had that State the control, anywhere else in the United States Any native son will tell you it can't be so • ram in that State. It really is an entertaining picture and filled with comedy situations even if you vicariously do suffer with the players when vou see what they have to go through. Bevan, transferred from New \ork to Los Angeles, decides to motor there with his wife and mother-in-law Logically, a decrepit Ford is used. On the road they encounter a sort of house-boat bus headed for the same destination, .\fter getting his fellow motorist into all sorts of troubles Bevan arrives to find the latter i.s his divisional boss and that he, Bevari. has to retrace his steps as he has been re-called to New York. "A Buggy Ride" (Pathe-Fables— One Reel) TT would be more consi.stent to call this "When •^ Knighthood was in Flower." because it deals with the hero's rescue of his lady-love after she has been kidnaped by the king in his coach-and-four and spirited awav to his moated castle. Xothing daunted. Benny Beetle the hero, converts the snail wliich has' been drawin-r Benny and June Bug, the heroine, into a -sort of high-wheel bicycle and starts in pursuit Arriving at the castle he reaches the room where the king is forcing his unwelcome attentions on June and slays the villain. Before this successful denouement Benny kills a veritable army of regal courtiers and sunporters. The fable IS unusually amus'ng and that is hi"-h praise when one considers the uniform excellence of Paul Terry's work.— P.\UL THOMP