Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1920)

72 rnotopiay Magazine "The Deep Purple would suffer for lack of sufficient punch were it not for Miriam Cooper and her co-stars, who save it from mediocrity. J. Warren Kerrigan wears a monocle in "No. 99. and you 11 probably know all through this entertaining play that he's falsely accused of being a crook. "The Courage of Marge O Doonc i.« a red-blooded tale of the rugged North that will make you want to go up there, bears or no bears. ihe role of Cavallina's patron. Betty Ross Clarke is an attractive ingenue and Gilda Veresi and Amelia Summer\'iUt' have small parts. The direction by Chet Withey, is able and the old New York settings attractive. THE DARK MIRROR— ParamountArtcraft THE D.\RK MIRROR" is also a blurred mirror. A highly improbable melodrama in the telling of which the author, director and star are constantly being forced to admit that the story they are relating is not at all true. The two heroines, played by Dorothy Dalton, are twin sisters. Separated in their infancy, neither is conscious of the other s existence, yet, like the Corsican brothers, so close is the bond between them that each subconsciously reacts to the emotions and adventures of the other. Thus the girl who was brought up by wealthy foster parents in refined surroundings is given to dreaming that she is the other girl, who has fallen in with a band of crooks. In her dreams she is variously pursued and mistreated and prevented from following her naturally wholesome impulses. But as the audience is aware that each of these episodes is a dream, the story is never convincing and excites the flippant remark rather than the gooseflesh thrill. In the end the unfortunate sister is drowned and an amateur psychoanalyst clears the disturbing complexes of the other, making a happy ending possible. Dorothy Dalton gives a vigorous performance in the melodramatic episodes, and does her best to make them seem real. She is still a lovely camera subject, though, strangely enough, considering her experience, her beauty is frequently minimized, particularly in the close-ups, by the too-hea\y shading of her lips. The lip-fault in pictures is as common as the foot-fault in tennis, and should be as quickly penalized. THE DEEP PURPLE— Realart PRODUCER R. A. Walsh is to be credited with the employment of a real all-star cast for "The Deep Purple." Without these exceptionally gifted players — notabiy \'mcent Serrano. W. B. Mack, W. J. Ferguson, Miriam Cooper and Helen Ware — it would be a very ordinan,' crook play. As it is played it holds a reasonably sustained interest in the familiar adventure of the up-state innocent who is lured to the city by the plausible thief on promise of marriage, and there forcibly inducted into the crook's game. She is finally rescued by Stuart Sage, as the understanding juvenile. The backgrounds, both interior and exterior, are splendidly pictured and the detail carefully worked out. The individual performances are all excellent, proving, as said, the wisdom of spending money on actors to save a weak storj', or the extravagance of wasting so good a cast on a story unworthy of them^ just as you please to look at it. "The Deep Purple" perfectly represents the type of crook play that by repetition has lost its punch. THE SILVER HORDE— Goldwyn SI.M1L.\R virtues have saved many a Rex Beach picture. They may be 80 percent "trick stuff." Sections of the >now wastes of .-Maska that decorate them may be nothing more than a quarter acre of salt and potted firs in Hollywood, Cal. The story may bend suddenly toward the highly imaginative or . slide off into pure picture stuff that irritates more frequently than it stimulates. But ever> Rex Beach slor\ I liave seen on the screen is told with a certain masculine directness that is refreshing, and no one of them has ever been permitted to become so downright silly as to insult the intelligence of us bourgeoisie. "The Silver Horde ' is a good picture in spite rather than because of its commonplace romance. It combines with a well-told stor> the virtues of the scenic and the weekly pictorial. Few pictures have been more convincingly aimosliheric. thanks to the frequent cutting in of scenery bits showing the Canadian lakes and rivers and a fine set of salmontishing views. It is a perfect job of assembling, and Larry Trimble's scenario is at least a near-perfect job of plot building. This stor> has a firm foundation from the moment Boyd Emerson, befriended by Cherry Melotte and George Bolt in the north, starts East to raise the money necessary to start an independent canner\^ It gathers momentum with even,scene, without doubling on itself or becoming entangled in