Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1919)

1 12 and Charles Clary arc two film veterans whose every conspicuous appearance calls lorth a shower of warm Burleson approval. Francis X. Bushman, Earle Williams and lienry B. Walthall have ^one out of the limeliKhl. The first two seem, through lack o/ personal diversity, to have played themselves out with their public; Walthall has been a victim of poor plays which his style of acting, in late years, has not improved. And Jack Warren Kerrigan is feeling to a certain extent, the cold touch of neglect with audiences which once acclaimed him the king of them all. But Mary Pickford is still the ciueen of the movies. Mary is coming into years which must tell a serious story : will she carry her tremendous following with her when sb.e makes the inevitable jump from ingenue to grownwoman roles? Perhaps the coming season will give the answer. Her tremendous intelligence, her extraordinary will and her great power to work are hopeful factors of permanence. She has had, in the past year, no plays like 'Stella Maris," which, in the minds of most people, is the linest thing she has ever done. Nazimova is the odd bird of the business. The public is actually in awe of her. She is regarded as a strange creature of extraordinary powers and singular manifestations, an incarnation of passion, a bizarre manifestation of revenge, an eerie manifestation of fate, or at her humanest, a singular being from foreign parts. She is more a part, and less a person, than any actor or actress of the screen. To the picture community she is as strange, as fascinating and as unworldly as was Mr. Hergeskeimer's Tao Yuen to the other dwellers in Java Head. And what, we say in passing, wouldn't she do with that particular part on stage or screen ! Nowithstanding her bizarre qualities, I think people like her best when she is most womanly, "The Red Lantern," giant spectacle that it proved to be, elicited not a tithe of the almost passionate comment stirred up throughout the country by "Out of the Fog." The other truly singular and impersonal feminine consideration is Lillian Gish. She is regarded as a sort of Bernhardt. Her tragic portrayals, culminating in "Broken Blossoms," have moved not only women, but men, profoundly, and so she has come to be accepted as a sort of classic actress — a classic of a new sort, comparing with the Shakespearean queens of another generation, or those who made the nation weep in "Camille," or "The Two Orphans." Mary Miles Minter is, I should say, a young person with a tremendous future, if the enormous interest in everything she does is any indication. In a year when she did absolutely nothing of distinction, or enduringly worth while, she has kept, and even increased, her vast personal following. Geraldine Farrar is a success of the talking machines, and such publications as "The Story of My Life." Meaning by that, that her greatest following is in the small towns and innumerable hamlets where she has never been seen, but where her continual audible and optic publicity has made her a national character. The cities ask what she is going to play; the country asks only when she will appear. Norma Talmadge has kepi her place in the front rank of emotional actresses throughout a year in which her plays have been of poor quality — and so real is her place in the hearts of her people that in almost innumerable instances they have written indignant critical comment on the vehicles supplied her. but rarely, if ever, does she herself gain adverse mention. Norma's sister Constance has been a triumph of carefully t)irked plays, in the main, and a growing triumph of careful direction. Of girls of the purely ingenue type \iola The Shadow Stage {Coiitiiiiicd Jrotn page 77 J Dana has been the biggest winner of the year, and her devotees especially welcomed her sudden turn to comedy, six or eight months ago. Marguerite Clark, on the other hand, is an ingenue who is trying to get away from ingenue parts, but she is not finding a new following. Alice Brady has an enormous clan inland, and what she lacks in devotion on both coasts she makes up in the Middle West and the great plains country. Dorothy Gish is regarded as a female Chaplin. Elmer Clifton's pictures, in the early part of the year, brought her general recognition as an eccentric comedienne and those that followed have increased that recognition. However, much as her recent "Nugget Nell" was appreciated by the sophisticated, it seemed too profp sional, too much of an inside burlesque, to strike a wide note of popularity. Among the veritable ingenues, Margery Daw and Gloria Hope are the comers, whereas the interest in the two new Griffith girls, Clarine Seymour and Carol Dempster, wanes because of the long, long waits between their pictures. Dorothy Dalton, and her powerful, highsexed plays of the modern woman in all la modern woman's varied surroundings, have become a looked-for institution. Miss Dalton has been played cleverly, consistently and persistently from the managerial standpoint, and the game is won. A year ago she was a blazing beauty of merely cometary brilliance. Today, in the popular mind, she is a fixed star. Louise Glaum has experienced a set-back in favor which may be attributed to her lack of appearances. "Sahara" revived a once-extensive but long quiet Glaum comment— yet how often does she have such a play. Priscilla Dean is a bright possibility, hardly yet launched, but increasing steadily in that form of prosperity known ajs fa'n attention. Her crook play.s gave her a unique place in the popular favor. The same things that were said of Pearl White last year may be said now. She is a perennial of popularity. Corinne Griffith, in the recent plays Vitagraph has given her, has made a steady popular advance. Texas Guinan, in her Westerns, is advancing to national reputation. Dorothy Phillips has a steady, consistent following which means much more than a flash and a swift forgetting. Mary MacLaren is advancing much more rapidly than her coldly but perfectly beautiful sister, Katherine McDonald. In the restricted but intelligent patronage of Gloria Swanson there is a most interesting reflection upon the highly sophisticated, elegant photoplays in which Cecil DeMille has confined her. These subjects — and so, Gloria — are not the ham and eggs of the movie multitude; they are the lobster and champagne of the screening city folks. Of an average, steady popularity are the works of May Allison, Alargarita Fischer, Juanila Hansen, Helen Chadwick, Helen Eddy, Madge Kennedy, Barbara Castleton, June Elvidge, Bessie Love, Gladys Brockwell, Ruth Roland, Miriam Cooper, Sylvia Breamer, Jane Novak. Doris Kenyon. .Anita Stewart, on the other hand, seems sheerly and simply a matte.r of personal popularity. The Stewartians are interested in her, apparently, rather than the vehicles she adorns. Mildred Harris Chaplin depends for comment upon other people; once it was Lois Weber, her director; now it is Charles the Great, her husband. Theda Bara, as far as epistular comment goes is a matter of history. Nor are they interested in Irene Castle. Such has been a year's favor of the people who pay the bills. I will make a few remarks, on especial! significant productions, appearances and de velopments, next month. THE MONTH IN BRIEF: "The Pinnacle" (Universal). This is on of the three best plays I have seen this yeai The other two are "Broken Blossoms'' an "The Miracle Man.' I only wish I ha. space to discuss a masterpiece as becomes masterpiece. It is a singular product indeed for it is the first directorial production o Eric von Stroheim, the intensely elegant ani intensely villainous young Teuton who firs won general recognition in his brief part ii "Hearts of the World." Von Stroheim i about everything there is to "The Pinnacle. He wrote the story as a novel. Then hi made a scenario from the novel. He di rected the picture. He acted the principa part. It is a tale of the Austrian Tyrol laid, presumably, at some time following thi close of the war, as the chief participant are a traveling and eminent Americai surgeon, his wife, and a young Austriai officer spuriously invalided out of the army The American is of the sort who loves hi wife but takes her for granted; she is i lonely child — and Von Stroheim, only slighth camouflaged under the name of "Eric Voi Steuben," is the serpent in the lonesomi Eden. I am not going to tell the story, fo; two reasons: first, because I haven't space and second, because it would be unfair t( you. It is convincing throughout, and thi simulation of the Tyrolean Alps is almos beyond belief. It seems to me that the mas ter has produced a pupil — we are doing ii pictures what the first masters of the Barbison school did in painting — Von Strohein is the direct artistic descendant of Griffith and in its perfection of detail, its semblanci to all the small realities of life, its omissior of no touch or trifle which lends to illusioE and the gratification of intelligent observers "The Pinnacle" is a Griffith picture. Ir addition to the foregoing applause for pro ducing an almost perfect photoplay, let ui hasten to say that Von Stroheim deserves just as much hand-clapping for his acting A silent, smiling Nemesis of the mountains — Sepp, a guide — becomes before the end of the picture, the most portentous figure on the canvas. He is perfectly played by T. H Gibson-Gowland. Sam de Grasse, as the American physician, and Francelia Billing ton, as his wife, are perfectly disposed in Von Stroheim's fantasy. Lillian Duceji should be commended for believable titles in this photoplay. "Checkers" (Fox). Let William stick to melodrama like this, and the picture patrons will rise up to call him blessed. "Checkers," notwithstanding the fact that its thrills are conventional, and its situations are old acquaintances of Father Time, has a speed that never lets down, an electric sort of thrill in its most exciting episodes, and its heroics are of the style that recall those days when we shuffled our feet among the peanut-shells on the gallery floor and nearly fell over the rail whenever the heroine was in peril. I find especially commendable in "Checkers" the work of Thomas Carrigan. "The Grim Game" (Paramount). This is the best play Harry Houdini has ever grappled with, or wriggled himself out of, and it is the best piece of the school which may be described as tiick melodrama. In other words, all of Houdini's celebrated stunts, such as shaking off a set of bracelets, writhing out of a straight-jacket, or break ing half a ton of manacles, are mcluded, but there are also many new and cntii-ely localized manifestations of his diabolic clever ness; and almost all of the feats, escapes and what-not are part of a well-woven, logical {Continued on f^age 113)