Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1920)

Th Shad e ow Reg. U. S. Pat. Off. A Review of the new pictures b); Burns Mantle and Photoplay Magazine Editors "The beauteous Clarine Seymour dances tula hulas and otterwise conducts herself -with Richard Barthelmess in fiery South Sea fashion as "The Idol Dancer." I HAVE a friend, a wise little friend, who insists that John Barrymore's "Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde" will be numbered with the classic productions of the screen and, years and years from now, be regularly taken from its tin boxes to be run before the astonished eyes of students of the pictured drama as a perfect sample, not only of what once was accomplished by a great actor before the camera, but of what all actors of even that advanced time should strive to achieve. That is one popular opinion. I have another friend, not so little ^ and it may be not so wise, who insists as strenuously that "Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde" gave her a most terrific attack of the movie blues, from which -' she has not yet recovered, nor expects ever fully to recover. Its very excellences as an acted horror, says she, have set her advising all the mothers she knows to keep their children away from it and to guard themselves accordingly as their condition and belief in pre-natal influences may suggest. My own reaction to this cinematographic tour de force strikes somewhere between these two. I left the picture cold, not to say clammy, but eager to sing the praises of J. Barrymore and his sincere and quite amazing per ' formance in this famous dual role, by which he reaches the peak of his screen achievements. Eager also to declare it to be the finest bit of directing John Stewart Robertson has ever done, and a job that places him with the first half dozen intelligent directors in the field. But I felt a lot like the friend who would keep her children away from it and suffer nary a pang of disappointment if I were told I should never look upon its like again. Frankly I do not care for horrors, either on screen or stage. If they possess a soul-purging virtue that does us good it must work subconsciously in my case, for never a satisfying thrill do I l<i C i HIS department ■*■ designed as a real service to Photoplay readers. Let it be your guide in picture entertain ment. It will save youi time and money by giving you the real worth of cur y t ' By Burns Mantle get from them, nor more than a fleeting suggestion of entertainment. Invariably I am so very conscious of the actor's acting that I become much more interested in the facility with which he achieves effects than in the effects themselves. Or in the spiritual significance involved. A physician once told me that medical men never see a person as ordinary people see him; as a good looking, or homely, or thin, or fat, or short, or tall human being, but always as a physical specimen; as one whose features are perfectly assembled or I slightly scattered; whose shoulders are evenly squared or curiously twisted; p whose legs are sympathetically aligned ^ or humorous'y mismated. In somewhat the same way I see actors nfayihg abnormal humans. Sometimes they succeed in stirring my imagination, \oft«i they hold my interest, but usuaHy to analyze these emotions is to discover that they are inspired by something commonplace, something plausible, something suggestive of a reasonable human action in the story they are illustrating rather than in the perfect pictures of abnormality they are creating. So much for "Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde." It will easily become the most talked of picture of the time. A door and two windows were broken by the crowds that tried to see it on its first showing in New York. It may tour the country to the tune of similar crashes. Unquestionably it has lifted young Mr. Barrymore to the leadership of his contemporaries of the screen, as his "Richard III." had put him in the forefront of the advancing actors. The curiosity to see it will be great. But as to its continuing popularity I have my doubts. The story of the good Dr. Jeckyll who, be'ieving that the way to be rid of a temptation was to yield to it, and who succeeded in concocting a drug by means of which he could 66