Motion Picture Classic (Jan-Aug 1919)

CLASSIC nobleman who wants to repudiate his ^ marriage to a commoner, and, as the only record is in a wrecked yacht at the bottom of the sea, he almost gets away f with it. But the hero and the villain, encased in deep-sea diving attii'e, fight on the ocean floor, the scoundrel cuts his own air hose by mistake and all ends ^ well. There is the usual beautiful Tourjf neur photography and the playing of * Jack Gilbert as an unhappy young Scot, who loves the heroine in vain but gives Ik his life for her happiness, is most excel' lent. And the minor role of the yacht captain, played by an unknown player, is : admirably done. Anita Stewart’s “A Midnight Romance,” (First National), doesn’t measure up to that star’s first photoplay, “Virtuous Wives.” Miss Stewart has the role of a princess who, upon being shipwrecked apparently off Los Angeles, discards her title and takes a position as a hotel maid. Her adventures, her meet: ing with a wealthy chap during a stolen ; midnight bathing visit to the beach, and ; the efforts of a blackmailing couple to : trap the hero form the basis of Marion Orth’s story. Miss Stewart simpers thru the story. Jack Holt is the hero and Juanita Hansen, who seems to change companies daily, is the^blonde adventuress. Almost the most substantial thing about the story, if we except Miss Hansen, is the hotel background. The , director, Mrs. Lois Weber, has appar, ently commandeered a real hostelry. George Walsh must certainly save a goodly portion of his weekly stipend. His principal expense is the upkeep of a stalwart suit of B. V. D.’s. “Never Say Quit,” (Fox), is another melodramatic panorama of George’s shoulder muscles. Herein Walsh plays Reginald Jones, an : unlucky youth with a jinx and a penf chant for rescuing ladies in distress. He gets the worst of it every time until he lands on a small sailing vessel and rescues the fair young heroine from a muti, nous crew. The action is studded with 7 long subtitles — labored bits of near I humor. Producers seem to have the impression that captions can put over any sort of comedy. Here is another instance where they slow up the action, such as it is. This Walsh might do ^ something — in good stories and with \ good direction — for he has a healthy personality. Florence Dixon reveals promise as the jinx-breaking heroine. If Bill Hart were only as reckless about getting varied scripts as he is about (undergoing a convict haircut ! In “The Poppy Girl’s Htisband” he permits his cowboy locks to be shorn while he portrays a prisoner serving a fourteen-year sentence. He has loved and provided for his wife thru it all, and is quite naturally perturbed on his exit from behind the bars to discover the popp}^ girl marI ried to the very sleuth who “sent him : Then Hairpin Harry sets out to . get vengeance. It is a gentle revenge, merely the branding upon the fickle lady’s face of a picture showing a woman ■ pushing a convict into a convenient G grave. (Eighty-nine) But Hairpin postpones his revenge, for he meets his own little boy and his heart is softened. So he takes the lad and runs away to a place where he lives happily ever after, propelling a canoe thru sunset fade-outs upon a sylvan lake. All you can say about “The Poppy Girl’s Husband” is that C. Gardner Sullivan has devised a craftly scenario — but it isn’t life. Mr. Flart, however, is excellent, particularly in the moment on the train when he learns of the poppy girl’s perfidy. Juanita Hansen is the lady. Walter Long makes Hairpin Harry’s pal stand out splendidly. Georgie Stone, too, is adequate as the little boy. We award the Croix le Boredom of the month to “Johnny Get Your Gun,” (Artcraft). This is Fred Stone’s third — and most awful — vehicle. Edmund Laurence Burke has tried to fit the comedian with a story, building it around Stone’s acrobatic tricks, but the stunts fit into the plot like a bricklayer at the opera. Stone is an interesting example of a player who cant get over in the films. Your eyes actually have to hunt all over the screen for him. Poor Mary Anderson stands out a little, but James Cruze deserves all he gets at the end of Stone’s lasso for his French count. Having the most promising comedienne on the screen, Metro shows its business acumen by providing her with a melodrama wholly devoid of humor. This is the unkind treatment allotted the fair May Allison in “The Island of Intrigue,” a dull tale of a wealthy girl kidnapped by a gang of blackmailers. Miss Allison has the worst company of the month. Everybody is reviving old Charlie Chaplins. Some of them, as the famous Essanays, reveal many flashes of Charlie’s 1919 genius. The Drews’ comedies, alas ! are no more. Sunshine Comedies? A mad maze of Sennett stuff done plus speed and minus refinement — or anything else. The Harold Lloyd farces are certainly advancing with a wallop. They possess more originality and freshness of attack than any of the celluloid comedies of the moment. Consider the breathless fun of “Look Out Below,” with its clowning apparently on the upper girders of a skyscraper in construction. Or the snow satire of the Bolsheviki in “A Sammy in Siberia.” And Lloyd, who has an original way all his own, has the prettiest assistant on the screen in Bebe Daniels. The Patrician of the Photoplay (C ontinued from page 87) “But they are building so many sanitary modern theaters these days that even that is disappearing. 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