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10
Pictwe s and Pichure $uer
FEBRUARY 1925
Movie Dowkv arxd-Owts
Going down, down, down to the uttermost depths of movie
degradation seems to be a favourite pastime of screen
heroes. Perhaps the lovely heroines who rescue them
have something to do with the craze!
If I have to watch many more movie heroes going " down into the depths," I can't be answerable for the consequences. I probably shan't wait to pour out my soul in a series of brickbats addressed to the Editor of PICTUREGOER'S "Brickbats and Bouquets " page — I shall heave 'em there and then at the screen and get a little satisfaction out of life before they jail me.
It isn't that I mind their going down there (wherever it is) — I know that the pure young heroine will always be on hand to do her famous reclamation scene in the last reel. What I do object to is the way they set about it. One minute we see them slick-haired, well washed and shaved, with trousers immaculately creased, and the next — ye gods and little fishes, what a change !
I^ven their own mothers might well fail to recognise their beautiful darlings, in the dirty and unkempt specimens into which they degenerate. They neglect to brush their clothes and change their linen, let face fungus grow undisturbed upon their countenances, and become members of the Anti-Soap Brigade. And, worst phase of all for the long-suffering audience to watch, the deterioration is not merely physical but mental.
They take to drink or drugs — or both — and in a very short time, to judge from their screen appearance, are in a state of wild-eyed idiocy.
Presently they beg i n to SEE THINGS ! Crawly, creepy, unpleasant things on the curtains and the ceiling, where obviously none should, in the natural course of events, be found. After a while their pasts begin to worry them horribly.
All the people they
IT v
Above :
■ — Frank
Mayo can
look the part to
the life, so can
James Kirktaood (left).
have ever wronged turn up in unexpected corners of the room and vie with each other in going through facial contortions, calculated to strike terror to the strongest of miiuls.
The " down and out" — whose mental apparatus needs bolstering up at the best of times — gets " downer and outer " with each succeeding
Usually a woman's influence redeems them
shock to the system. He clutches wildly at the curtains, rolls his eyes and rumples his hair, makes hysterical lunges at imaginary people, and goes through intricate wrestling bouts with himself, until worn out with the unaccustomed exertion, he sinks unconscious to the floor.
"Phis is where the heroine is scheduled to find him and pray over him — after which he sits up, much purified and uplifted, and begins to take an interest in his personal appearance again.
Just occasionally, in our most modern films, it is the heroine who deviates from the straight and narrow path, and then it is the hero who does the praying and the heroine who repents of her sins.
But in The Red Lily Fred Niblo, the author and director, executed a