Picture-Play Magazine (Jul - Dec 1929)

70 WHILE George Bancroft stays on the screen the underworld will remain glamorous, fascinating, ironic and, from a safe distance, amusing. Granting that it is romanticized and sentimentalized, the movie underworld of which Mr. Bancroft is king is a vastly entertaining realm. And now that it has become articulate it is even more interesting, if not more real. Which is to say that the triumph of "Underworld" and "The Dragnet" is repeated in "Thunderbolt," with additional interest coming from the fact that it is entirely in dialogue. Again Mr. Bancroft plays his familiar character, that of a master gunman, police baiter and underworld chieftain, this time called "Thunderbolt" Jim Lang. Forsaken by his girl, "Ritzy," he traces her to the apartment of Bob Morgan and his mother, where she is living until she and Bob can marry. Thunderbolt's plan to kill Bob miscarries through the affectionate interference of his dog, and Thunderbolt at last is captured by the police. All this is conventional enough, though more than ordinarily tense and thrilling. But it is .while Thunderbolt is in jail that the picture takes on new and unexpected interest. Exaggerated the antics of the neurotic warden may be, and exaggerated too the conduct of the prisoners, with their quartet and their wisecracks tossed through the bars. But at this late day in the annals of the movie underworld novelty must be introduced. At any rate, this sequence paves the way for the finest acting Mr. Bancroft has ever given us, at the end of the picture. With the aid of confederates on the outside he has had Bob framed for murder, and plans to kill Bob as he himself walks by his cell to the death chamber. But at the last moment he changes his mind and saunters to as far as the door by cleared. Enjoyment of the picture must include the revelation by Fay Wray of unsuspected talent. As Ritzy, the gangster's swell moll, Miss Wray is wholly unbelievable. And this, if you please, from the heroine of "The First Kiss" one short year ago ! Richard Arlen, as Bob, also scores in his second audible role — scores so heavily, in fact, that the superlatives that one summons to describe his performance all at once seem trivial. Needless to say that such dependables as Eugenie Besserer, Tully Marshall, Fred Kohler, Robert Elliott, and E. H. Calvert are in keeping with the others. Miss Gaynor, Mr. Farrell, and Mr. Borzage Again. A touching idyl called "Lucky Star" brings Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell together again, not forgetting that all-important member of the trio who made "Seventh Heaven," the director, Frank Borzage. Between them they have wrought a poetic fairy tale which the electric chair his dog. Of followed course Bob is pretends to deal with grim realities, but which remains forever in the land of make-believe. Not that it is unconvincing, for it is entirely believable while you remain in its spell. But Mr. Borzage's talent lies as much in creating a curious, almost undefinable atmosphere of remoteness as in directing his players. In this instance we see murky byways of a country that cannot be identified. While the characters have Anglo-Saxon names, one never feels that they are on English or American soil, but are existing in that nameless land of Mr. Borzage's own mind, where good is exalted to the heavens and evil is baser than anywhere else. And where, also, the most terrific conflict of these forces is ended by an expedient found in the simplest story-book for littlest folk. Here, in particular, evil is routed and goodness triumphs when the crippled hero regains the use of his body and gives the brawny villain a trouncing that a prize fighter might well be proud of. To make the defeat of badness more complete, he is joined from out of nowhere by a group of nameless bravos, who needlessly add their blows to his own in rendering the villain hors de combat. Thus hero and heroine are free to stand on the railroad track and face a happier day, while the train bears away their Nemesis. All this begins when the heroine, Mary, a wretchedly unhappy product of a squatter farm, meets the hopelessly crippled ex-soldier Timothy Osborn, who lifts her out of her despondency and "makes her clean inside and out." Then the girl meets a former buddy of Timothy, who wears a uniform he has no right to, and whose pretensions stir the cupidity of Mary's mother. The woman promises the pseudo-soldier that Mary shall be his, and to make sure that she shall be ready for him the girl is locked in her room. When the mother drives her cart by the cripple's home on her way to the station to deliver Mary to her unwanted admirer, the boy clutches the cart and is dragged over the snow until his grip relaxes and he falls into a drift. But he negotiates the journey somehow — probably with the help of the fairy godmother Mr. Borzage keeps in the prop room for his Fay Wray comes through with a surprising performance in "Thunder bolt?" with George Bancroft.