Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1920)

66 Photoplay Magazine "Water, Water, Every where ! " is an amusing comedy drama, frequently dipping into farce, starring Will Rogers. 'Huckleberry Finn is a perfect picture for all boys to take their daddies to see. There is fine Twain atmosphere throughout. ' Everywoman fulfills the demands of the spectacular picture, ■whose message gets over as surely as it did on the stage. Otherwise the picture, though sanely adapted from Mr. Hughes' novel of the same title, is frankly conventional in both plot and action and is a little like an echo of a dying past. "The Cup of Fury," in other words, would have been a sensational picture if it could have been conceived, written and produced when we were hot upon the trail of German spies, and keen to cheer the men who were doing such wonderful work in the war industries. Now we get a belated thrill or two, but feel, some way, that just as the picture arrives at the most interesting point of its development, which concerns the effect the I. W. W. and its bolshevistic allies will have on peace times, it flickers and goes out. The purpose of the picture, which is the strengthening of our Americanism, is fine, and the characters are all well played, particularly those of the heroine, by Helene Chadwick; her lazy brother Jake, by H. A. Morgan; Davidge, the upstanding American hero, by Rockcliffe Fellowes; Abbie, Jake's wife, by Marian Colvin, and the aristocratic Weblings, by Kate Lester and Herbert Standing. The Goldwyns' eminent authors idea is certain to bear fruit in time. It already has done so, notably in the case of the Re.x Beach pictures, and will do so in the case of Rupert Hughes, for he is a man of taste and he is possessed of a keener sense of drama than ninety per cent of American writers. But it takes time for even a gifted man to make his influence felt through a medium of expression still strange to him. "SHOULD A WOMAN TELL?"— Metro Another picture I saw the other day that has a fine background for the approach to the story is Metro's "Should a Woman Tell?" The early scenes are at a life-saving station on the Atlantic coast. There is a yacht in distress in the ofSng. The guard is called to the rescue, the guests and owner of the yacht are saved by the breeches-buoy and the real story begins in the next reel. These scenes of the lifeguard in action, the launching of the boats, the distress of the shipwrecked party, the helpful part played by the New England natives are wonderfully done, as fine a storm effect and as clever flash-lighting as I have seen. Then the story slips into the groove frequently followed by betrayed-heroines. In this instance it is helped very much by Alice Lake, who plays the girl with a fine feeling for the dramatic episodes and an in(Mcation of intelligence in her playing that is none too common on the screen. She knows, by instinct, perhaps, something of the art of repression, and seldom overplays her scenes. This talent, combined with her clear-eyed beauty, is likely to keep her feet on the path to stardom on which Metro has started her. I did not catch the answer to "Should a Woman Tell?" though I assumed from the heroine's experiences that she was a good deal of an idiot if she did. "WATER, WATER, EVERYWHERE —Goldwyn Will Rogers, as every screen follower knows by this time, is one of the rare personalities of the screen. I suspect him of writing half his own titles (the better half) and of developing many of his own best scenes. It must be a joy for his director to work with him, and if he had as sound a story sense as he has a comedy sense he would be an unbeatable acquisition. The new Rogers picture, "Water, Water, Everywhere," is, in a majority of its episodes, an amusing and interesting comedy drama. Where it is weak is in the padding, the effort to string out with exaggerated comedy the slender plot. In these incidents it dips freely into farce, and farce is for the farceurs, not for the comedians of Rogers' quality. In this story Will becomes mixed up with the unco guid people of a Texas town who try to make effective the new prohibition laws. The drys are a crowd of interfering ladies and the males who flock with them, and the wets a rollicking bunch of good and bad fellows who want their likker when they want it, but decide there is compensation in drinking the soft stuff if the barmaids are beautiful. Rogers is neither very wet nor very dry, but a sane middle of the roader. "The man who says he can take it or leave it, sure knows how to take it," is one of his anti-drunk lines, and "Who wants to drink thirty-seven bottles to be one hundred per cent drunk?" is a contrasting argument for the wets. In the story he loves the town belle, but nobly sacrifices her to the handsomer hero once that candidate