Motion Picture News (Nov-Dec 1925)

November 28, 19.2 5 2527 ON BROADWAY By William A. Joh nston Director Gus Meins introduces William McCormick, western representative of Motion Picture News, to the Buster Brown family at the Century plant, producing for Universal release. "The Road to Yesterday" is pronounced one of De Mille's best accomplishments and a sure-fire box-office success. First National is shouting over Colleen Moore's "We Moderns" and Sam Rork's "Clothes Make the Pirate." * * * W ITH all the good pictures, however, we cannot but feel that about the most important recent screen event is Vilma Banky, the beautiful and charming young actress brought from Austria to this country by Samuel Goldwyn. Few new players, it is true, have the fortune to be launched in so fine a picture as "The Dark Angel," but it is equally true that this accomplished performer would stand forth in pictures of less calibre. Considering the fact that personalities are the goods we sell most over our box-office counters and also the fact that these goods, through over-use, get considerably shopworn, it would seem that concentration on new players should be about the most important move in production today. If there are any more Vilma Bankys in Europe it would pay to suspend production in some quarters and go search for them. * * * ARTHUR BRISBANE, writing his noted column for newspapers "for people who think," has this to say: "The Federal Trade Commission, anxious perhaps to earn its salary, wants men owning moving pictures and also theatres to sell the theatres. The commission says they cannot own BOTH. "That is new and doesn't seem to fit the Constitution, which allows a man to own and use property, if he doesn't injure others. "If Messrs. Zukor and Lasky cannot show their own pictures in their own theatres, what right has the express company to stable its own horses in its own stables? Why not compel the express company to sell its stables or sell its horses? Stables are no more closely related to horses than moving pictures to theatres. "If Zukor and Lasky can't show pictures they manufacture in theatres they build and own, how can Standard Oil exhibit and sell the gasoline it manufactures in the thousands of gasoline stations that it builds and owns? "How can a manufacturer of shoes sell his shoes in his own stores ? "If the Trade Commission will prevent as far as possible swindling and misrepresentation, and allow legitimate business men to do their business in a business way, it will be attending to its work." * * * "S TELLA DALLAS" is a splendid piece of picture construction. Back of it you can discern the steady, sure, sincere hand of director Henry King. The characterizations by Belle Bennett, Lois Moran and Jean Hersholt are faultless. Samuel Goldwyn, always a pioneer, always aiming at the highest, has scored with another large credit to the screen. * * * A FEW years ago most every issue of Motion Picture News carried a handsome insert on the product of the American Film Company of Chicago and Santa Barbara, Samuel S, Hutchinson, President. The name, in fact, goes prominently back to the early days of the Mutual Film Corporation. Since the inserts ceased, S. S. Hutchinson has called regularly at this office and indicated always that he was in continuous touch both with the market and with studio technique. So we speak of the Hutchinson Film Corporation of Hollywood now producing for Associated Exhibitors release as a carry-on in production and not at all a comeback to it. Mary Brian, who will always be remembered as the Wendy of "Peter Pan," escorted Peter B. Kyne, the noted author, about the Paramount West Coast studios on his recent visit there to confer with Director Irvin Willat on his "The Enchanted Hill,"