The Moving picture world (January 1920-February 1920)

January 31, 1920 THE MOVING PICTURE WORLD 707 Rubbernecking in Filmland THE holidays are all over and Filmland has settled down in its Christmas socks, ties, smoking jackets and pajamas to the serious business of settling up. The weather is fine and sunshiny, but it will not be that way very long, if the Neck is any kind of a goose-bone prophet. A number of beetle-browed clouds have been holding a caucus up around the top of Mount Baldy; the foothills are hazy, and the gophers are carrying st-raws in their burrows. However, "into each life some rain must fall," as a chap named Longfellow once remarked when he stepped in at a neighbor's to borrow a gum coat, and as we are still holding a coupon for ten of the fourteen inches of rain we get every winter, and as Hiram Abrams, "Doc" Shallenberger, Isaac Wolper, A. Aronson, Mack MacArthur and several other visitors we wanted to impress with our climate have steamed away on the eastern rattlers, let 'er precipitate ! No III Feelings. Owing to the fact that the A. P. and other cold and unfeeling distributing agencies seem to care more for stories about the earthquake in Mexico, the Jap birth rate and Charlie Murray getting touched for his diamonds than for interesting items about the sore finger of a celebrated writer, I am forced to take advantage of this opportunity to inform an anxious world that the damaged digit which I sustained while engaged in the perilous pursuit of gathering news at the Lasky plant last week, is getting along as well as might be expected. I did not say much about my visit to Lasky's last week, in spite of the fact that they assaulted me with the remains of a kitchen set, I still hold them in such high esteem that I did not want to color their story with the gloomy thoughts that surged through my mind every time I bumped the sore finger on the space bar of my typewriter. A Flint Age Cabaret. I saw a lot of interesting stuff at Lasky's. Sam Wood was making "The Dancin' Fool," with Wallace Reid and Bebe Daniels in the leads. Sam was staging a most unusual cabaret scene in a garden with trees, palms, flowers, grottoes, bowers. Wallie, in a costume that was in vogue about the time that Stanley Waterloo's "Ab" was going to cabarets, and Bebe in the chic and fetching skins of .a Flint Age flirt, did a cave-man dance that knocked the spots ofif. anything I've ever seen done in the dancin' line. Exhibitors book this and bill it strong. William De Mille, who is screening Edward Peble's fine stage play, "The Prince Chap," was working in an interior somewhere in Soho, which is to London what Greenwich Village is to New York. Ribbon-Winning Beauties. "The Prince Chap," which is to be a William De Mille Special, is being made on a most pretentious scale. Tom Meighan is the Prince Chap, Casson Ferguson is Jack, Kathlyn Williams has the part of Alice, Ann Forrest is the slavey. Peaches Jackson plays the part of Claudia, the child, at four; May Giracci at the next age, and Lila Lee is the completely charming Claudia at eighteen. Charles Maigne was making exteriors In Stra igh t Dra matic Role Fatty Arbuckle Shows Varied Emotions With Ease By Giebler for "The Fighting Chance," and talk about a bevy of beauties I You know the kind of women Robert W. Chambers describes in his books— and the gowns they wear? Well, a bunch of them had stepped right out of Bob's book into the scene, grace, manner, clothes and all. Anna Q. Nilsspn, Dorothy Davenport, Ruth Helms, Maud Wayne and a lot more that I didn't recognize, but there wasn't one in the crowd but would have taken all the ribbons in a beauty show. I saw Bryant Washburn, who is working in "Mrs. Temple's Telegram," but not when I saw him. He was among those present on Sam Wood's set when Wallie Reid and Bebe Daniels were doing their dance, and he stuck around until little "Sonny" Washburn, who is visiting the studio came and led him away. Donald Crisp was also in the crowd, and he told me all about "Held by the Enemy," William Gillette's Civil War thriller, which he will start on in a few days. Arbuckle as the Sheriff. Don is going to have some cast in the piece. Lew Stone, from the regular stage, is going to play Gordon Hayne ; Jack Holt will be Colonel Prescott ; Clyde Fillmore, who has just made the hit of his young life as the lead in "Civilian Clothes," twenty-seven straight weeks at the Morosco Theatre, will be Brig. Surgeon Fielding; Wanda Hawley will be Emma McCreery; .^gnes Ayres will be Rachael Hayne, and Walter Hiers will be Tommy Beene. "Barring" Fay Tincher. ("hii.stie comedy star in her newest, "Go West, Young Woman!" The treat of the day, however, was when I struck Director George Melford's set, where he was making "The Round-Up," with Roscoe Arbuckle as the sheriff. Can you imagine Fatty in a straight dramatic role? Well, he's immense, that's all, and I'm not trying to pull any fresh insinuations about avoirdupois when I tell you that he is there with every ounce in the heavy stuff. Doyou remember the "Nobody loves a fat man" incident in the stage version of "The Round-Up," and what a hit it made? Just wait for Roscoe, that's all. A Light Touch in a Heavy Role. Mabel Julienne Scott — Great Gosh t How often I wrote that name back in the old days when I was doping out movie dramatics for a St. Louis newspaper— and Mabel and Mitch Lewis were knocking 'em dead with "The Barrier" out at Billy Siever's theatre on Grand Avenue — well, at any rate, Miss Scott is supporting Fatty. Wallace Beery is the tough half-breed; Raymond Hatton, Tully Marshall, Ernest Joy, Ruth Ashby, Irving Cummings, Eddie Sutherland and Tom Forman, who is doubling in brass by writing the scenario of the piece, are all in the cast of "The Round-Up." I stopped for a long time at "The Round-Up" set, watching Fatty running up and down the dramatic scale with ease and grace. And don't get it into your head that the dramatic scale Roscoe uses resembles a hay scale, either. His dramatic touch is light and delicateHe presses gently on the soft pedal, irises in and out from the subtle shades of humor, self-pity, scorn and anger with the art of a master and, what is still better, the inimitable Arbuckle mannerisms. Selig Plant Grows Rapidly. I paid a visit to Col. W. N. Selig's plant this week, together with Mack MacArthur, Doc Shallenberger, of the Arrow Films, and Paul Hurst, director of the "Lightning Brice" serial. Col. Selig always has had a big plant and just now it is growing still bigger. If they keep on they'll have to move the lake in Lincoln Park to make way for the new buildings. Three big stages and a new administration building have been added to the plant since my last visit. We saw Bertram Bracken making Arthur Hornblow's story, "The Mask," into a picture. Hedda Nova, who is Mrs. Paul Hurst, Jack Holt, Fred Malatesta and William H. Clififord are in the cast of the film. Franklyn Farnum and Mary Anderson are working in a serial at Selig's, but they were on location or somewhere; at any rate they were not at the studio and we didn't get to see them shooting, but we did get to see Billy Wing, who wrote the story of the serial. Many Productions Planned. Col. Selig has a lot of stuff up his sleeve in the production line. Many of the books from his famous library are to be put on the screen in the near future. As soon as "The Mask" is finished, work will start on James Oliver Curwood's "Kazan." This will be followed by "The Kingdom of Slender Swords," and then one of E. Phillip Oppenheim's