Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1920)

Photoplay Magazine — Advertising Section The Shadow Stage (Continued from page yj) performance than the careful and sometimes ultra-puritanic Miss Kennedy. One of the chief lights of the play is Herbert Standing, as the patriarchal master of the bclowstairs crowd. Hugo Ballin, I suspect, was the artistic party responsible for the genuinely atmospheric settings and properties. ALMOST A HUSBAND— Gold wyn Opie Read's "Old Ebcnezer" is the basis of this tale of the hard educational life in a Mississippi river town, while Will Rogers, the champion of the lariat and the political small talk, is the bashful and gawky hero. Rogers plays Sam Lyman, the hick teacher of a hick school. The beautiful Peggy Wood, one of the most charming of the younger actresses of the stage, is the belle of the place, and, at a party, they endure a mo:k marriage which they afterward found was the real thing. .Complications ensue for the heroine, and % tequest Sam does not endeavor to set hw'unintended bride free. Various sorts of melodrama are deployed, including a visitation of night riders and a bit of amateur bank wrecking, but in the end the small-time pedagogue rights a lot of wrongs by the money he has made from a novel, and at once sets things right and claims his bride. Rogers is so characteristically himself that one wishes the story might have been taken at a more leisurely pace, so that his slow, sure-fire personal humor could have more croppings-out. Still, the affair is well set and well made, the subtitles are good, and all in all, it is a fair entertainment even though it is by no means an unusual one. THE LOTTERY MAN— Paramount Here is an example of an old stage story, burnished up and thoroughly revivified by a fine scenario and a thoroughly competent cast and director. You all know the adventure of Jack Wright, who, anxious to get a large sum of money immediately to make his mother comfortable, put himself up in a marriage lottery, positively agreeing to marry the holder of the winning ticket. And what complications ensue, when black janes, old maidsjtomboy widows and frowsy females of ^^ sorts threaten to capture Jack Wallace Reid for life ! As I said at the start, the whole success of this piece — and it is a rapid-fire, diverse, bafflingly-written success — is the result of great skill in the laying-out of the scenario, more skill and care in casting, and final skill and invention on the part of the director. That individual was James Cruze, and this is just another item on his loio credits. Wallace Reid plays with the boyish abandon and simple reality which has characterized him, more and more, of late, and the long supporting contingent includes Harrison Ford, Wanda Hawley, Marcia Manon, Fannie Midgeley, Sylvia Ashton, Winifred Greenwood and Fred Huntley. I never cared much for the original play. I did like the photoplay. Lapse of yenrs, change of tastes and all, it was a real improvement. STEPPING OUT — Ince-Paramount Wallace Reid has not been the only steady iilT nil 1 1 in lliiw^i I year. Enid Bennett, who used to sfcipg/ and try for a plaintiveness which was beyond endurance, has steadied herself, acquired a simplicity and a reality which are convincing, and has made herself a genuine screen asset by playing real women — not creatures at whom one longed to hurl a tomato or a Sennett pie. Here, she has a role in an oft-told story which, with skilful varhtions, is enduringly good: the role of the wife who determines to play a fifty-fifty game with her husband, and counter his whilom amours with apparent flirtations which, notwithstanding their premeditation and real harmlessness, have all the appearance of the wicked real thing. She plays June Hillary, the gracious little wife of Bob Hillary, a not-bad young person who enters the marital relation with the mistaken idea that not only is there a double standard o'f morals, but that the wife, as well, is a sort of meek domestic who should take her food and housing and endure, with more or less gladness, all the rest. Miss Bennett's performance, throughout, is a discreet, realistic, self-reliant and ever-womanly delineation. Niles Welch is equally good in the ungrateful role of the husband. Fred Niblo's direction is lifelike at all times, and there are many excellent comedy touches. Miss Bennett, as we opined in a previous line, is finding herself as a portrayer oi genuine young women. BACK TO GOD'S COUNTRY— First National One of the axioms of picture producers i^ "animal stuff always goes big." "Back to God's Country" has several hundred feet oi the most remarkable "animal stuff ever photographed. It is a James Oliver Curwood story of the now well known unknown wilds of Northwestern Canada, with a dog as the most active of the heroes and Nell Shipman as the decorative feature. The story is about the same as all Mr. Curwood's other "red blood" yarns, but the antics of a colony of bears, cubs, bobcats, geese and other fauna, give it an atmosphere all its own, and compensate for much superficial melodrama. David Hartford directed. THE COUNTRY COUSIN— Sehnick Elaine Hammerstein has suffered long from not enjoying those advantages which are offered by a well-equipped distributing organization. Without a regular succession of productions through a single channel, it is hard for any start to "arrive." This is now assured to Miss Hammerstein, and the first of her Selznick pictures, "The Country Cousin," forecasts a brilliant future for this young daughter of a distiniruished house. The story is by Booth Tarkington and Julian Street, and tells how a strong-minded but none the less lovely young woman from the west invaded a dissipated circle in New York, rescued her cousin from fortune hunters, and made a man out of a snob. Physically the picture is beautiful, dramatically it is strong. As for Miss Hammerstein herself, there is a chaste voluptuousness about her that imparts power to her more import ant scenes, and keen interest to the inter ludes. Walter McGrail offers an interesting study of the society man who is shamed into making something of himself by the girl from the country. Alan Crosland directed and created a production which shows every sign of having been made with care and intelligence. THE GLORIOUS LADY— Selznick Olive Thomas makes pathetically heroic efforta«4fl impart life and reality to "The Glori<Mii)Lady," her third Selznick picture, but the story provided by Edmund Goulding is so absurd that neither star nor director , should be blamed for the result. The fable is the ancient one so popular among the mushy minor novelists of fifty years ago, of the Duke who marries the peasant girl, \ whereupon his family makes things so unpleasant for the Duchess that she runs away. The Right Powder for Young Girls There isn't a skin so perfect that it will not be improved and benefited by the use of LA MEDA COLD CREAMED POWDER. Even young girls should be encouraged to use wonderful LA MEDA. Is there another face powder in all the world for which such claims could truthfully be made? 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