We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
ABOUT THE NEW PICTURES
CAPTAIN OF THE GUARD— Universal
Because the producers doubted America's ability to pronounce it, the title has changed from "La Marseillaise" to "Captain of the Guard." It is an elaborate, cumbersome and considerably dull account of the birth of the stirring French national anthem, La Mar.seillaise. It seems (from the film) that this came about through the love of Rouget de Lisle, captain in the king's hussars, for an innkeeper's pretty daughter who has become The Torch. Her father's murder by royal soldiers has turned her from sweetness to vengeance. The popular John Boles is de Lisle and Laura La Plante is The Torch.
MAMMY — Warner Brothers
Not Al Jolson's best, for this star seems to be exhausting his particular sentimental vein. This time Al is a minstrel with a heart of gold. He loves the boss's daughter from a distance but she cares for the handsome but philandering interlocutor (Lowell Sherman). A scoundrel substitutes real bullets for blanks in the revolver Al uses in a comic skit and he shoots the interlocutor. He flees the police and drifts to riding freight trains. Al sings old and new songs by Irving Berlin, featuring "Let Me Sing." The minstrel moments are better done than usual. Jolson gives a characteristic performance.
THE MAN FROM BLANKLEY'S— Warner Brothers
As puzzling a picture as ever emerged from Hollywood.
John Barrymore has returned to the light farce mood of his early footlight days in this weird comedy of a befuddled and tipsy young British aristocrat who gets lost in the London fog and wanders into the wrong party, a gathering attended by a houseful of eccentric English types. There is just one exception, the pretty governess who has known the young nobleman in his dim, alcoholic past. How Barrymore persuaded his producers to make this fantasic film is beyond us.
BE YOURSELF— United Artists
The old talkie mistake is here: putting a comic in a highly sentimental role. Fannie Brice is a splendid comedienne in song and specialty. To cast her as the heroine of a love story is a Hollywood mistake. Here Miss Brice plays a cabaret entertainer who falls in love with a prize fighter and tries to steer him to the championship. In return, he loses his head over a gold digging blonde of the cabaret. Miss Brice falls down in her serious work but puts her songs across wih a smash. A passable film — with some good night club and prize ring scenes. These aren't novel but they are well done.
THE COHENS AND KELLYS IN SCOTLAND— Universal
Another adventure of Charlie Murray and George Sidney as those perennial bickering partners, Messrs. Kelly and Cohen. You have seen them in New York. Paris and Atlantic City, meeting all sorts of tribulations, blonde, brunette and financial. Here they try to corner the Scotch plaid market in Scotland and thereby make a fortune. They aren't working together, however, but are bucking the tight little country independently. Of coui*se, they come to comic grief. The comedy is of the hokum variety and Murray and Sidney provide the laughs.