Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1921)

58 Photoplay Magazine "Two Weeks Without Pay" gives Bebe Daniels opportunity to wear pretty frocks. It is a nice little story of a mannikin ana a movie actress, both roles falling to Bebe. The talents of the amateur detective are defied to discover who fired the fatal shot in The Scarab Ring. The ending will surprise you. Alice Joyce is starred. "Love's Penalty." featuring Hope Hampton, is a dramatic story that ends flatly. Not a picture of which the censors will particularly approve. her he is the one worthy person in the group, but she recovers her sight in time to know the truth and immediately transfers her love to the younger man. The hunted one is well played by Russell Simpson. Pauline Starks, Cullen Landis and Mary Alden give good support. Reginald Barker directed. WHITE AND UNMARRIED— Paramount EVEN as a crook Thomas Meighan is an alluring sort of hero. And after he inherits a million dollars in "White and Unmarried," and reforms, you rather expect him to turn out a gentleman. His fine clothes and his careful speech stamp him as a good catch, even for a beautiful heiress. But the makers of this photoplay wanted to be consistent, so while they start Tommy's interest in a fair young blonde of the upper set they turn him over frankly to a shimmy dancer in a Parisian cafe. It is an entertaining picture, despite its failure to follow a set line of developments. There is a suggestion that the director and his assistants would have enjoyed burlesquing it if they had dared. The titles make fun of the action frequently, which will amuse as many as grasp their intended subtleties and mystify the rest. But the Meighan performance and the pictures as pictures will satisfy the majority. The two girls are played by Grace Darmond and Jacqueline Logan. Tom Forman did the directing. A WISE FOOL— Paramount TT is high time that some one stepped in and saved James *■ Kirkwood from any more stupid and badly written stories. Here is one of the fine actors of the screen being made a catspaw to pull involved and uninteresting scenarios out of the cinema fire. "A Wise Fool" is the latest — and if Sir Gilbert Parker made his own adaptation for the screen, as it is said he did, he had better turn the next one over to the hired men of the studio. The attempt to tell the life story of a picturesque French Canadian is justified by the possibilities of the yarn, but the construction which starts the hero on a pilgrimage to Paris, then as abruptly brings him home again without giving him a chance to arrive; then marries him to a little girl in the steerage he met on the way home without any reasonable action to excuse his interest in her, has wasted a reel or two on nothing at all of story value. We found "A Wise Fool" dull and uninteresting. George Melford did the directing, and Mr. Kirkwood, whose performance was sympathetic and intelligent, was capably assisted by Alice Hollister, Ann Forrest and Alan Hale. By Photoplay Editors REPUTATION— Universal AFTER several years of fighting her way through "crook" melodramas, Priscilla Dean emerges, in spite of them, an actress of marked ability. This she proves in "Reputation." For the story itself, taken from the Edwina Levin novel "False Colors," little can be said. It is melodramatic, its discrepancies are glossed over with casual titles, and an extraordinary amount of credulity is demanded of the audience. Miss Dean, however, through her unusual portrayal of a difficult dual role, reveals talent that would do credit to an older and more experienced actress. LOVE'S PENALTY— First National REMEMBERING a former Hope Hampton photoplay, we approached this one with a pessimism rivaling that of Schopenhauer. However, we are glad to say that Miss Hampton redeems herself in a dramatic story not lacking in entertainment value. It is regrettable that so many of this season's film offerings end flatly, and that this one must be numbered among them, but there are flashes of originality and suspense which prevent interest flagging. Percy Marmont is the manin-the-case. Not a picture of which censors will particularly approve, and don't take the children. J' ACCUSE— Marc Klaw COMES now the Frenchman Abel Gance with a war picture written, produced and directed by himself. At present, in its fourteen reels it is of wearisome length depicting as we saw depicted during the early days of the World War, horror, devastation and death. In many ways the production is extraordinary and though faulty of (Continued on page 82)