Motion Picture News (Mar-Apr 1923)

March j / , 1923 1537 champion, Banion, and enjoy some of the richest scenes of this picture. He stalks through the story, unmindful of death, giving advice when it is sought and offering it when it is scorned. A happy-go-lucky playboy. A finely executed scene, rich in mirth, shows him in a shooting contest with another picturesque guide played with fine feeling and understanding by Tully Marshall. They become gloriously drunk, so much so, that they are scarcely able to walk. One asks the other to keep up the old friendship and show their sincerity by aiming at a target placed William Tell fashion on their respective heads. The rifles waver for an instant. The vision is cloudy. But once they take aim the bullets reach their mark — and the adventurous scouts don't bat an eye-lash. Watch Torrence close his eye and sight his target and enjoy the laugh of the season. Watch Marshall endeavor to remember an important message which he cannot do unless he has more " likker " — and try and keep a straight face. You cannot do it. Such intimate cameos help in making this picture the vital canvas it is. They help mightily in adding an eloquent human touch. Index to Departments Editorial Pictures and People 1536 General News and Special Features 1539 Chicago and MidWest Comedies, Short Subjects and Serials 1588 Construction and Equipment 1597 Exhibitors' Box Office Reports Exhibitors' Service Bureau 1559 Future Release Chart 1607 Pre-Release Views of Features 1571 Regional News from Correspondents 1581 Reviews of Latest Short Subjects Studio Notes and Player Brevities With the First-Run Theatres 1553 1535 1537 1552 1557 1590 1606 1552 1569 1610 1580 1586 1570 1558 1556 view on March 26, also ihe tomb of the " Queen of Sin.'' The letter was signed Nicholas Hood, archaeologist. This looks like a bit of exploitation concerning the Ben Blumenthal attraction which moves into the Lyric on the above-mentioned date. A1 N electric piano which automatically began playing the scales when the Heckley motion picture theatre in Duncannon, Pa., caught fire after the final show on the night of March 15, sounded its own alarm of fire when no one was in the theatre, and prevented the destruction of the building. When the firemen broke in the doors the piano was playing its last scale in double quick time. Firemen believe the fire started from a short circuit in the piano. After the theatre had been closed for the night a passerby heard the piano playing in the empty building. He looked in the window and saw flames and then sounded the alarm. Before the firemen arrived the screen and stage were afire. The piano, recently installed at a cost of three thousand dollars was ruined and there was an additional loss of two thousand to the building and equipment. DAVID BELASCO, Leonore Ulric and Hope Hampton sponsored by the Warner Brothers, were presented to the camera, the newspaper people and the trade press last Wednesday afternoon at the Warner Brothers offices. Will H. Hays and Courtlandt Smith were present. Miss Ulric is to play in " The Tiger Rose " and Miss Hampton in *' The Golddiggers," both to be filmed by Warner Brothers and supervised in the making by David Belasco. " These boys," said Mr. Hays, referring to the Warners, " are doing fine and progressive things.'' And so they are. After the brief reception, some Eastman color films of Hope Hampton were shown in the Warner projection room, causing David Belasco to remark : ' ' Wonderful ! Wonderful ! ' ' * # * 7 HE National Board of Review would have you know that Paramount 's " Bella Donna," First National's " The Isle of Lost Ships," and Goldwyn's " Vanity Fair" win the asterisks for the current week. We agree with the Board that they have chosen ivisely — and well. * # * WE are giving you this story as it was given to us with emphasis on the statement that it didn't spring from the fertile brain of the press agent. The Bangor, Me. Commercial is authority for the yarn concerning Harold Lloyd's " Grandma's Boy," which created a strange experience with a woman spectator. Listen boys! "When the employees were cleaning the Opera House Tuesday forenoon, they found a plate of false teeth, and a little later a Bangor woman called at the box-office and received her property, stating that she laughed so heartily at Lloyd's antics in the picture that she ejected her teeth and did not miss them until she reached home." Manager Greely and the Commercial vouch for its truth. * * * T T looks as if Harry Reichenbach was at it again. A letter * was delivered Tuesday bearing a stamp of Egypt, with the name of Tut-Ankh-Amen written upon it. The contents informed us that the site of Sodom and Gomorrah, on the rim of the Dead Sea, has been found — and will be given the world to PICTURE plays and picture companies may come and go, but the South Sea Island picture play will always be with us. Just at present there is an epidemic of dramas carrying the background of the South Seas, most of which have probably been inspired by the tremendous success of the stage attraction, " Rain." The Isles have charmed screen spectators and fiction readers for years. Frederick O'Brien's travel books are selling in one edition after another. Now comes the Wide World Photoplays, Inc., who have organized to make South Sea Island dramas for the screen in a locale hitherto unexplored by white men. The party will sail about the first of May and on reaching Hawaii a physician will be taken along who is said to be the only white man that ever set foot on the island where the picture is to be produced. Success to the venture. J~\ W. GRIFFITH has not announced any of his production ■*-^» activities but it is rumored about that he is shortly to visit England for the purpose of directing English artists in an English story based upon the Brotherhood of Man. It is said that the picture will carry a strong religious motive and that it will be filmed in Wales. Meanwhile Griffith's " One Exciting Night," has opened in London at the New Oxford theatre. HEINRICH LICHTE of Berlin, the inventor of the Dura process, will arrive Saturday on the S. S. Canopic and will take charge of the Dura Film Protector Co., Inc. He is bringing with him improved machinery. D P. SCHULBERG, president of Preferred Pictures and vice-president of the Al Lichtman Corporation, arrived in New York this week. The purpose of his trip here is to discuss with his partners, Al Lichtman and J. G. Bachmann, production plans for the coming year and to complete financial arrangements to cover the extensive program he contemplates.