Photoplay (Jan - Jun 1919)

Photoplay Magazine — Advertising Section The Shadow Stage (Continued from page 70) c5J>OiamondL o£>. dray, tJSansas %'\t,y, SQansas. Mellins Food Baby Mellin's Food is a means by which the mother can modify cow's milk to satisfy every food requirement of her baby. Send today for a Sample Bottle ofMellin's Food and start your bob)' right Mellins Food Company BOSTON, MASS. $35 to $100 a Week There ia a big, new, field— a growing demand for men and women skilled in Business LetterWriting1. "~ 1 I .u |i ■•■ : il in. ■. .,!■< offered Letter ' CntlCB. Collection Correspond"cnU, MuM Salon Director*. General House. Correspondent!!, etc. IjiSiiIIo'm now o\ tension training ' by tin "caso" system will mako yon a hlKh-irrado correspondence rritie, a miiwter letter writer, cap/able of ninniiKiiifr the entire com:; 'pondenca department of a big* orttan TrniD in your apnre time at 9. Low cob t; auy monthly pay ttn. Write now for free copy Master Letters In BuHinesa" LaSalle Extension University, Depl 1302 BLW Chicago "The World's Greatest Extension University" WANTED TXSEE&8 Traveling Salesmen aro essential Government Ruling. The demand exceeds the supply— Thousands of men and women hnve been trained through our Home Study Course and our Free Employment Service hu helped thousands to surce^H. Let us do the same for you Write today for biff Freo Book. Lint of Opening and full particular*. Address NATIONAL SALESMENS TRAINING ASSOCIATION. Dept. 21A. Chicago, III. U. S. A. EARN #35TO$100 AWEEK opportunity "The Forbidden City" does not compare with some of Miss Talmadge's recent plays, as a thing of beauty it is beyond all of them, and the star's portrait of a Chinese girl Li so perfect that director Franklin throws that perfection fairly in your face on an almond-eyed close-up. Always, Norma Talmadge is an artist. In one or two details the play missed its celestiality by an odd margin — notably the scene in which the Pekin palace guard, to overcome an unwary foe, resorts to a barroom wrestling match, a thing about as unlike the Chinese character as anything that may be imagined. Your Oriental moves more subtly and certainly : an overturned flower pot, the plunge of a knife, strong strangling fingers . . . and the outward course of events flows so serenely that even passers-by cannot tell murder has been done. Tom Meighan enacts a man of varied years in Worden, the Consulate secretary who loved Toy's mother, and Reid Hamilton is the young lieutenant. THE LADY OF THE DUGOUT— Jennings Boys, get out the yellow-backs. You'll need them for reference, for here come the ex-bandits Al and Frank Jennings, living over in celluloid much that they say lived in actual outlaw reality years ago. At any rate, I went in to this one looking for a mere roughneck impossibility — cheap sensationalism— and I found a rattling adventure story, with more than one touch of sweetness and genuine human interest. The Robin Hood element is worked in, of course, for who could justify any outlaw literature that didn't rob the rich to give to the poor? So the Jennings boys, after gayly trimming a bank-cashier and locking him in his own vault, find a woman abandoned by a drunken husband, alone and hungry with two little children in a dug-out ; and how they help her makes the most of the rest of the story. The fact that th's episode happens to be very natural and human is what makes "The Lady of the Dugout" more than a mere spooled dime novel. TONY AMERICA Triangle Francis McDonald puts this picture over by sheer ability to characterize. As a story, there is not enough to it to make it worth any consideration whatever. Antonio, an Italian fruit-peddler, in a fervor of patriotism discards his last name and takes the name of his adopted country. The fact that his faithless wife has an affair with a pro-German butcher furnishes the rest of the idea; and the fact that McDonald looks like an Italian, and can most whole-heartedly act like one, furnishes the entertainment. THE PRETENDER— Triangle The kind-hearted cowboy, and his readiness to venture anything to help anybody, is the theme of "The Pretender," of one William Desmond's last Triangle enterprises. A school-teacher, coming West in advance of his sister, is thrown from his horse, and, with a broken leg, is carried to Bob Boldwin's (Desmond's) shack. Obviously, unless the school is kept, the school-master will have no job. So the illiterate and determined Bob commences his career as a pedagogue. He is not strong on larnin'. but he is a Ludendorfi for discipline, and no one can say that at least there isn't order in the school. When the sister arrives her presence is looked upon with village suspicion, and a chase after an absconder preludes the loveepisode which winds up the sketch. The vigorous way in which the young people do their parts sends the piece over the top. Ethel Fleming, Gene Burr and Walter Perkins rally round Mr. Desmond. THE BORDER WIRELESS— Hart-Artcraft Every man does at least one spy-play, nowadays. Some do a lot of them. The fact that patriotism is considered a perfect substitute for art in all its forms spoils most of these well-meaning affairs. But it didn't spoil William S. Hart's. C. Gardner Sullivan did not provide him with an unusual story, but Hart provided himself with an unusual production, good cast, and extremely careful direction. Banditry is pretty much to the bad nowadays, and the piece opens with Hart, as a fugitive outlaw, helping out a pretty little telegraph operator near the Mexican line. One thing leads to another and this incident reveals a gang of Germans posing as* cattlemen, but in reality transmitting army information into Mexico for direct and constant forwarding to Berlin. Here you have the substance of the stirring events that follow — a well-handled melodrama. Wanda Hawley is the blossom rising out of this cactus-bed. There is more than one bit of quick humor in the piece — notably the moment in which the shy hero-outlaw-lover. watching the aeroplanes at a fort, allows that he will enlist "if I can ride a horse." DAUGHTER OF THE SOUTH— Paramount This may have been a play for somebody, but it was no play to give Pauline Frederick. It's all about a Creole girl who neglects her true Spanish lover that she may listen to the advances of a fickle "novelist." Why scenario writers make authors so loving must remain a mystery — to authors. As a rule your romantic author is about as noble an exponent of his own goods as a shoemaker. There are exceptions, just as an occasional shoemaker is found to possess a neat set of hoofs. But to our subject: as Dolores, an ivory virgin, Miss Frederick tries hard not to appear sophisticated, but the role demands, not a matured young woman, but an immature ingenue. This Miss Frederick decidedly will not be until Ponce de Leon finds his fountain. Pedro de Cordoba, who' always suffers so in love, gives similitude to Pedro, the devoted Don. and Rex McDougall. who looks about as romantic as Rex Beach, delineates the novelist of alternating devotions. Miss Vera Beresford, the very girlish daughter of statuesque Kitty Gordon, plays the finallyselected lovee of the novelist lover. BATTLING JANE— Paramount Sort of an American "Little Disturber" that we have here. Once more we have the determined and fiery young female solitary. shooting herself into first view on a bicycle. engaging in a general fight with a gang of hoodlum kids, pitied by the wife of a badegg doctor — and, after the doctor's desertion of his home, and his wife's death, valiantly assuming the care of their little friendless baby. But her troubles have just begun. Intense patriotism has hit the town, and Bat 1 ling Jane's kitchen job in a boarding house does not nermit any savings after caring for herself and "her" baby. So she is branded as a slacker because she buys no liberty bonds and does not contribute to the Red Cross. But the baby as a prize-winner brings Jane all the money there is in the world — viz., S500 — and also returns the baby's own father as an intended thief. Not to be overlooked are some passages of Rube love-making, between Jane and her bucolic swain, which almost write a new chapter in the well-thumbed book of that sort of (Concluded on page 96) Ererv lulrrrtlsenicM in rHOTt>n.AY MAGAZINE Is gu&rantopd.