The Moving picture world (January 1926-February 1926)

February 20, 1926 Moving Picture World 699 Looking Them Over — With Qray Strider Reviews from the Screen Angle of Plays, Books, Stories and Operas 'The Qreat Qatshy'' SOMEBODY most surely ought to make F. Scott Fitzgerald's book "The Great Gatsby" into a picture. Owen Davis has worthily dramatized it and William A. Brady has magnificently produced it at the Ambassador Theatre. Of course this play has to be juggled around but it must be picturized for it is a stupendous drama, all the more gigantic because it is absolutely true to life. The poor, ignorant, pathetic, slumgullion clamdigger of a boy raises himself from an abyss of poverty, ignorance, hopelessness, namelessness and misery to the great Gatsby, a financial robber Baron, with a palatial home on Long Island. He accomplishes it by sheer merit and bravado to make himself worthy of a little chit of a society girl from Louisville who isn't worth one of his least expensive collar buttons. This girl marries another man while Gatsby is at the front. She hasn't the character to withstand the persuasions of her family. She is lower than the cheapest denizen of the streets. She doesn't know whom she loves — her husband or Gatsby. She has no stamina, no loyalty, no heart, no soul in her. She amuses herself at Gatsby's expense until he falls murdered at her fect-unable even in death to reach her — to t-^uch her. And her husband — responsible for this crime — is the one to whom she turns and says : "Take me away. I don't want to be mixed up in this." Little coward, little sneak, little gutless animal I One way to make this into a screen production is to have the husband justly shot and let Gatsby get the wife. This is unworthy of Mr. Fitzgerald's genius but since you can't permit a screen audience to accept an unhappy ending, what else is to be done? James Rennie didn't act the part of Gatsby. He WAS Gatsby. To me he will always be Gatsby and if this drama is picturized the movie audiences of America should be permitted to see him as Gatsby since his performance cannot be surpassed. The value of this play as screen material is unlimited. Because of the unanimously favorable publicity which both the book and the play have enjoyed, the picture would stand on its own feet and require no coddling or trick publicity schemes. "TKe Jest" Arthur Hopkins is reviving "The Jest" (translated from the Italian of Beuelli) at the Plymouth Theatre with a superb cast. It has already been made into an opera — last year in Milan and there is no other single drama that has such screen potentialities. But here I am— up against the same thing — an unhappy ending. Must this superb bit of Florentine love and lust, blood and harlotry be scrapped because of its murderous climax? Surely there is somebody with a brilliant, scenario imagination who can turn it into an acceptable picture. Just imagine SPRING in Florence; two brothers in love with the same lovely wanton—Neri, the mighty captain, and Gabriello, his romantic young brother; a third lover, a painter, who plots a revenge indescribable in its cruelty and picturesque ness. Imagine a blind woman in a dungeon, pigmy-like in stature but colossal in vengeance, Neri had destroyed her youth and caused her blindness. Imagine this puny wreck with a gold hair pin in her hands — Neri's gift to her in her girlhood — creeping up the chest of this bound giant, reaching, groping to put out his eyes. The play is prolific with magnificent sequences. There is a comedy woman-in-waiting whose rough wit makes the sides break, a dolt of a doctor whose funny stupidity helps to break the strain of tragedy. There is in it everything— everything necessary to enthrall, terrify, and amuse a picture audience. In production, in cast, in setting it is the finest drama I have ever seen. Alphonz Ethier as Neri and Maria Ouspenskaya as the blind ones, were flawless. Basil Sydney, Violet Heming, and my old favorite, Ferdinand Gottschalk, gave outstanding performances. SURELY THERE IS SOMEBODY WITH A BRILLIANT, SCENARIO IMAGINATION WHO CAN TURN "THE JEST" INTO AN ACCEPTABLE PICTURE. "The Qreat Qod Brown'' Eugene O'Neill's new tragedy "The Great God Brown" which is being presented at the Greenwich Village Theatre brings to the stage our old friend Peer Gynt, in the guise of Dion Anthony, a talented, sensitive, pitiful artist who fights his best friend from the cradle to the grave, both in the love of his life and in the work of his heart. Mr. O'Neill has gone back to the Greeks and borrowed their use of the MASK. To reveal the character Anthony is forced to show his wife and the world in general he covers his face with a mask. But when he stands alone, his real self unmasked, unguarded from the hurts of the world, his wife doesn't know him, doesn't understand him, doesn't love him. It's only her own conception of him that she adores. So he creeps away to Cybel of the red kimona, of the tin-pan player piano, and to drink and forgetfulness. The mask has come to stay. O'Neill's revival of it is tremendously significant, but for it to be come really important for stage and screen it must be much better done than in Mr. O'Neill's somewhat heavy handling. "Shanghai Qesture" John Colton's colorful "Shanghai Gesture" which A. H. Woods is introducing at the Martin Beck Theatre is unfortunately not suited for the screen as it deals exclusively with the Shanghai underworld and features Mother Goddam, keeper of the world's largest brothel, and portrays to a fine degree white degeneracy of the worst phase. "Don Q, Jr." "Don Q. Jr." which is being produced at the 49th Street Theatre tries unsuccessfully to snitch a few stars from Douglas Fairbanks' crown. In it, William T. Tilden, of tennis fame, is quite unnecessarily cast. If you will go back to your childhood and drag out Horatio Alger's favorite plot of the poor but honest little newsboy who wins everybody's heart you have the whole idea. It's grand fodder for grammar school boys. "The Love City" Sessue Hayakawa in Hans Fackwitz' "The Love City" is superb. This drama deals too extensively in harlots, opium, and plain talk to be entirely comfortable for the movies but it should be considered for the screen regardless. It is a deep thrilling tragedy that puzzles your mind, sickens your soul and repels your heart. But it fascinates, and fascinates, and fascinates 1 ^'Shelter" If Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer would like to find a remarkable vehicle for Lon Chancy say for about $9.98, all they have to do is to step down to the Cherry Lane Theatre and see "Shelter." Under one of the docks of the North River a hunchback has established a little kingdom. There he lives surrounded by five of the lowest types of humanity: a consumptive, a girl thief, a rabid female socialist, a drunkard, and a shell shocked soldier. It's good old fashioned melodrama of the rarest order. And the girl's virtue is saved — just in the nick of time. If you can keep from laughing for two hours, overlook the worst case of miscasting you have ever seen, when you get half-way home you will realize that with all its faults and amateurishness a clever scenario writer could bewitch this stupid "incident in three acts" into something worthwile. "The Dream Play" Strindberg's Dream Play which is being presented at the Provincetown Theatre is too frankly experimental to be of any use in Pictures.