Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1920)

rhotoplay Magazine 73 side issues; it picks up a legitimate thread of comedy in the person of the youth who expected to help supply fish for the tannery with a bamboo pole; it develops some f,'enuine thrills during the trust crowtl's attempt to blow up the independent traps and it ends with a romantic flourish that sSlisfies the romantic and offends no one. But Beach and Trimble and Frank Lloyd, the director, all fell for the hackneyed incident of the polite villain who is proved the father of the Indian woman's child, which was a foolish and unnecessary bit. seeing that it weakened an otherwise reasonable conclusion. The cast is an especially well chosen one. THE DANCIN' FOOL— Paramount-Artcraft THE DANCL\' FOOL " is another of the month s pictures in which the virtues of a human story overcome the handicaps of a feather-weight and fantastic comedy plot. It really doesn't matter how trivial a story may be, if it is sound at heart. The world, it happens, is full of "dancin' fools," bright lads who just can't make their feet behave and find it irksome to buckle down to work with the lure of the jazz ringing in their ears. It isn't as easy to accept the wise Wallace Reid as an unsophisticated country youth as it is Charles Ray. but he has enough of the same engaging quality of youthful exuberance to endear him to a large public, and he carries the hero of this story through a series of city adventures with uncommon skill. His regular job is that of a $6-a-week clerk in his old-fashioned uncle's jug business, but he happens to meet Bebe Daniels, who is dancing at a cabaret, and after she has taught him the newest steps he becomes her partner. Of course uncle discovers him foolin' away his evenin's, and fires him for the fourteenth and last time. But Wallace refuses to be fired and ends by saving uncle from selling out his business to a couple of TuUy Marshall villains just as it is about to boom. Then he marries Bebe, which is bound to be a satisfying ending to anyone who has taken note of the physical attractions of this young lady. It also happens that Miss Daniels is something more than beautiful. She has that "certain subtle something'' that differentiates the real from the merely personable heroine, and her announced elevation to stardom is easy to endorse. Raymond Hatton is excellent as the Uncle Enoch of the jug business, and Willis Marks, Tully Marshall, and Lillian Leighton help considerably. RIDERS OF THE DAWN— W. W. Hodkinson WHATEVER else may be said for or against the Zane Grey movies, they certainly do move. "Riders of the Dawn" is as full of excitement as an extra inning baseball game, and as thrilling, if it happens you are a Zane Grey fan. I'm not. Not, at least, a regular Zane Grey fan. I like the story backgrounds his adapters and scenarioists extract from his no\'els; like the themes, and usually the selection of the players. But I wear>^ of the fighting and the fires; the heros who cannot only whip their weight in wildcats, but are not at all averse to taking on a crowd of bellowing hippopotami. Old Kurt Dom in this picture (he being Roy Stewart in makeup) not only bowls over a quartet or two, but he fights at least one army, and maybe two, of rioting I. W. W. bolsheviks, killin:^ five or six of them with a single bullet, as nearly as I could make out. Villains to the right of him, villains to the left of him, crumpled and fell each time Kurt raised his pistol arm. Which is neither good sense nor good direction. An honest-to-goodness fight with reasonable odds against the hero is always twice as exciting as one of these overdrawn scenes. The story is of a war hero's effort to readjust his affairs in the wheat country after his return from France. He is much in love with a belle of the township, when the villain rings in a French girl on him — a French girl with just enough English to insist that Kurt is her naturally, though not legally, begotten husband. Which discourages the heroine considerably for three or four reels. But after the fighting and the fires are over, the truth is told. The French intriguante admits she is a liar, the villain confesses he should be hanged, the bolsheviks take again to the road and their tomato can kits, and all is as well in "The Desert of Wheat" as could be expected. Robert McKim. the producers' favorite highclass bad man, stressed his villainies rather (Icsperately, probably under the instructions of his director, Hugh Ryan Conway. ( Continued on page go ) Even Katlilyn Williams and Leatrice Joy leave Eugene ^X'alter s play "Just a Wife" — just a film, warmed over from its stage form. The rather melodramatic title of "The Path She Chose may be misleading, for it is an interesting story with a true-to-life appeal. • Dorothy Dalton does her best to make "The Dark Mirror"' seem real, but it excites the flippant remark rather than the gooscflesh thrill.