Motion Picture News (Oct-Dec 1930)

November 1 , 1930 Motion Picture N e zv s 51 Opinions on Pictures Laughter (Paramount ) Intelligent and Pleasing {Reviewed by Sherwin A. Katie) WHAT Pathe achieved with "Holiday," Paramount has duplicated with "Laughter." The two pictures, as entertainment material, have much in common. Both are charming and human stories, pleasantly told, acted with distinction, and possessing an intellectual, rather than a physical problem for a plot. Delightful humor is interspersed throughout, and if the fun of "Laughter" is not as sophisticated as that of "Holiday" it is just as human, and universally appealing therefore. The difference is merely the difference between Donald Ogden Stewart, dialoguist for "Laughter," and Philip Barry, author of "Holiday." Both pictures may be said to flatter the intelligence and taste of audiences without confounding them. There is a sincerity about the performances given by Frederic March, Nancy Carroll and Frank Morgan in "Laughter" that covers up what would otherwise be obvious flaws in the story. Any one of these performances would distinguish another picture. They make of this one a different and refreshing production, set apart from the mine-run pictures of the day. Nancy Carroll plays a former show girl who has forsaken old, carefree attachments and surroundings to become the wife of C. Mortimer Gibson, a wealthy and elderly widower, played by Frank Morgan. One year after her marriage three significant events occur almost simultaneously. Ralph Le Saint, a young sculptor still in love with Peggy Gibson, the former show girl, plans a suicide in a mood of bitterness brought on by the treatment his wooing has received from the girl. A chance visit at his studio permits the girl to prevent the suicide and pacify her admirer. Then Paul Lockridge, a musician also in love with Peggy Gibson, returns from Paris, where he fled at the time of the girl's marriage to her financier husband. He resumes a charming and boyish courtship with her, basing his arguments on the obvious stuffiness of her new life and her need of laughter. About this time Gibson's daughter, Marjorie, played by Diane Ellis, returns from schooling abroad. She is paired up with Le Saint, and both couples proceed to involve themselves in humorous escapades and scrapes that result in considerable embarrassment and trouble to old Gibson. In the course of one of these escapades, Lockridge (Frederic March) tells Peggy he is about to return to Paris. "Come with me," he urges. "You are not happy with your money and power. You are dying. And you are rich— dirty rich. You need laughter to make you clean." Peggy refuses this invitation and returns to her home. That evening, during a party in the Gibson home, Peggy learns that Marjorie. Gibson's daughter, plans to elope with Le Saint. Aware that the sculptor does not love the girl, but wants her money to insure the leisure necessary to his art, Peggy intercepts the two at Le Saint's studio and exposes the sculptor to the girl. Dejected, he commits suicide, and Peggy, found in the apartment, is involved in the subsequent notoriety. The emotional experience gives the girl a new spiritual honesty. She returns to Gibson, confesses her unhappiness and advises him she cannot go en as his wife; then joins Lockridge and laughter in Paris. There is a deft touch to the action which glosses the heavy and the tragic sequences with an air of having been either so natural as to be inevitable, or else that what has happened does not matter anyhow, since the important things are vet to come. This same touch, in which the direction of H. D'Abbadie D'Arrast must have figured importantly, transforms almost the entire production into a highly convincing, sincere and human story. Its last impression is one of lightness and charm. Its weaknesses are found in its infrequent lapses from credibility. For instance, Le Saint's suicidal bitterness, both at the beginning and end of the picture, is not convincing because it has not been justified by the weight of events leading up to it. People do commit suicide for the loss of love and the loss of money, but Mr. Anders' performance does nothing to help one understand why. Again, Nancy Carroll, in suddenly announcing to Morgan her intention of leaving him for March, does not succeed in making the action a reasonable one. The spiritual experience she undergoes as a witness to Le Saint's suicide is not registered, and, consequently, her decision would have appeared just as credible before as after the tragedy. Likewise, her buxom, obvious prettiness is out of type with the intellectual companion and adored of artists. But in the picture as a whole these faults are trivial, inconsequential. As an entertainment offering it succeeds unquestionably well. Highbrow audiences will approve of it without a doubt, and the incurable fans, though they may miss some of its finer nuances, will welcome it as something new and refreshing. It is an opportunity to draw customers from among the disdainful classes who regard the movies as "trash." It should get great word-of-mouth advertising everywhere and should do aboveaverage business in the full week stand where it has a chance to benefit by this and build. March walks away with the honors in this one. His ambitious young composer is an honest and accurate portrayal of a certain type of artistic temperament that is as diverting as it is refreshing. Frank Morgan turns in a fine performance as Gibson, the successful^ financier in love with a pretty girl whom he is utterly incapable of understanding, but whose devotion keeps him forever trying and forgiving. He wins a sympathy for the role that in less capable hands might have earned no more than derision. Nancy Carroll's performance is always adequate and occasionally distinguished. Glenn Anders, the young Theatre Guild player, has a difficult and unsympathetic role but handles it satisfactorily. Fine performances are registered in minor parts by Leonard Carey as a butler and Ollie Burgoyne, a maid. Direction is in tune throughout. A musical short and a cartoon will fit. Produced and distributed by Paramount. Directed by H. D'Abbadie D'Arrast. Story by him as well. Adapted and dialogue by Donald Ogden Stewart. Length, 8,893 feet. Running time, 99 minutes. Release date, Oct. 25, 1930. THE CAST Peggy Gibson Nancy Carroll Paul Lockridge Fredric March C. Mortimer Gibson Frank Morgan Ralph Le Saint Glenn Anders Marjorie Gibson Diane Ellis Benham Leonard Carey Pearl Ollie Burgoyne One Night at Susie's (First National) Well Acted Crook Stuff; Pleasing (Reviewed by Jack Grant) WHERE the public has not tired of crook dramas, "One Night at Susie's" will please. It is neatly handled and played although its greatest shortcoming is that it wigwags every climax before achieving it. Nominally the star of the production, Billie Dove plays what amounts to the third role in importance. She profits rather than loses by being cut in footage. Come to think of it, that perhaps was what has been wrong with many previous Dove vehicles — too many close-ups where the star had nothing to do but exhibit her features. This part gives her greater act ing opportunities and she avails herself of them. The story concerns the adopted son of Susie, friend of thieves and gangsters, who is raising the boy straight. The boy (Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.), falls in love with Billie, a member of the chorus in the show for which he is press agent. Billie kills the rich angel of the show in protecting her honor and Fairbanks takes the rap. While in prison, he writes a play for her, insisting she sell it as of her authorship. She has difficulty in finding someone to produce the piece. When she sees how hard the boy is taking it, she becomes the mistress of a manager who offered those terms as part of the production contract. Susie has little use for the girl thinking her merely out to get what she can from Fairbanks. Susie learns of the relationship with the manager on the eve of Fairbanks' release from prison. Confronting the girl with the information, the mother is made to understand it was all in the nature of a sacrifice to the boy's happiness. To keep Fairbanks from knowing, Susie helps her gangsters kill the crooked detective who is the only one who might tell. The flatfoot had it coming in any event. Pretty wild stuff. Helen Ware plays Susie and completely dominates the picture. It is nicely modulated and quite enough in itself to lift the tone of the production. Fairbanks Jr., makes the boy thoroughly believeable and Tully Marshall is responsible for the comedy. James Crane's crooked detective is an out-of-the-ordinary portrayal worthy of attention. Will stand an all comedy support in shorts. Produced and distributed by First National. From the magazine story by Frederick Hazlitt Brennan, Directed by John Francis Dillon. Adaptation and dialogue by Forrest Halsey and Katherine Scola. Photographed by Ernest Haller. Running time 64 minutes, Length 5,760 feet. Release date October 19. THE CAST Mary Billie Dove Nick Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. Susie Helen Ware Buckeye Bill Tully Marshall Houlihan James Crane Hayes John Loder Drake Daude Fleming Du Barry, Woman of Passion (United Artists) Has Its Moments (Rcinezved by Sherwin A. Kane) "p\ U BARRY," as the story of a tempest \-J uous and historically significant woman, has some power and some fine dramatic values. As a picture it is good entertainment and a box-office morsel, if your gang still likes Norma Talmadge, but it lacks that final distinction necessary to set it apart from other pictures of its kind. Like a sales manager's business graph, tracing the rise and fall of sales over some such erratic period as now upon us, it has its moments of excellence, its even, unwavering norms and its depressions. Also, it is in costume which may hurt. The heights, such as they are, are attained by the ability of Norma Talmadge in some sequences, ?.nd by flashes of brilliant direction. Its relapses are contributed to by Miss Talmadge's limitations in other sequences in which she appears to be clearly out of step with the Du Barry role ; by the ordinary performances of other principals, and by that gross tinsel touch which pictures habitually are giving to their picturizations of royalty — particularly historic royalty. These latter are as glamourously artificial and unconvincing as any that have ever been given to the democracies of the theatre. Miss Talmadge's is a difficult role, and with it goes the burden of the picture. In the highly emotional, life-loving and fiery midinette who was plucked from a modiste's shop and set down