Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1920)

"The Little Shepherd" of Kingdom Come" as produced with Jack Pickford by Goldwyn lends a suggestion of reality to the John Fox Jr. classic. We expect more of Maurice Tourneur than "My Lady s Garter," an adaptation, concerning the garter which Ed'ward III. presented to the Countess of Salisbury. board, cuffed and strangled into insensibility practically in every reel. "Wolf" Larson's constitution becomes the chief wonder of the beholder: his flail-like arms and ham-like fists the stars of the show. Not only can he whip his weight in wildcats, but he can suffer a fractured skull, jump off an operating table in the hospital and do up his brother, old "Death" Larson, himself a nifty two-fisted brute, with a punch or two next scene. It was a little hard to believe in "Wolf." Or in the adventure of the soft Humphrey Van Weyden and his parasitic fiancee, Maud Erewster, who, having been picked up at sea by Larson, following a most realistic wreck of a ferryboat in San Francisco bay, were forced to accompany him to the sealing grounds. These two, deserted on an abandoned schooner, were able to navigate it through a storm — and even our freest imagination refused to see them safely through the experience. Get through they did, however, to land on a desert island from where, after they bury the finally defeated ■'Wolf," now become paralyzed, blind and helpless, they are rfV'lpd hy ^ pnRSing revenue jTUtt N Dustin Farnhan and Winifred Kingston do their share to make a success of "The Corsican Brothers," Dusty playing a double role. The individual performances are excellent. First honors should probably go to the unfortunates who were knocked c!own. out and over. Whatever their pay, they earned it. Noah Beery was a fine, upstanding brute in the titular role. Tom Forman played the disillusioned Van Weyden intelligently and Mabel Julienne Scott was an attractive Maud Brewster. Assisting were Raymond Hatton and Walter Long. THE RIVER'S END— First National Having to do with the picturesque Royal Mounted police, and their well advertised habit of getting their man; with the Canadian snow wastes as a background; with strong men, villainous heathens and handsome ingenues, and having particularly to do with one of those double-exposure heroes who plays his own double, "The River's End" ranges through all the familiar con\entionalities of the screen drama. It is not, for all its wealth of adventure, the sort of story I should have expected Marshall Neilan to select for his first picture as an independent. The trickery of the double exposure is not exactly a novelty, nor a help to the holding value of the story. But having selected this James Oliver Curwood yam Neilan has done well by it, where a director with less imagination and less sense of drama would have butchered it to make a melodramatic holiday. The director is greatly helped by Lewis Stone, a fine actor wherever you put him. There was little physical differentiation between Derry Conniston of the Royal Mounted and John Keith, the fugitive he was hunting in the north, and the perfect similarity of feature was quite unbelievable, but none of the scenes was slighted. Conniston dies, after arresting Keith, and the latter, shaving his beard, returns to the force in Conniston's place. There he meets the girl supposed to be his own sister and falls in love with her. It is not a particularly convincing romance because of the palpable youth of pretty Marjorie Daw and the accepted age of the hero. She is a romping child and he more the bachelor friend of the family than a reasonable suitor for her hand. However, after Keith's innocence is proved, the sister heroine follows him to the river's end and leads him a merr>' snowshoe chase that provides a variant upon the familiar "clinch and fade out." THE FORTUNE HUNTER— Vitagraph It is a little to be regretted that Winchell Smith had not begun his experiments with pictures before Vitagraph made its screen version of "The Fortune Hunter." Smith, I am sure, would have gotten more out of this favorite play of his than Tom Terriss has done. Fortunately, however, it is too fine a. stor> for any man to spoil, and it is in the main cnsistently' and well played in the Vitagraph version. . There is a sort of prologue that, so far as I could see, has nothing whatever to do with the main story and therefore wastes footage that might better have been given to the development of the hero's adventure. The plot foundation is a simple one and should have worried no scenarioist. Nathaniel Duncan, played by Earle Williams, and Henry Kellogg were roommates at college, Kellogg the son of wealth— Nat the typical unfortunate. With Duncan discouraged and hopeless Kellogg proposes a scheme by which he is sure the "failure" can be made a success. If Duncan will go to a small town, and, by pretending to be possessed of all the virtues, will make a