Picture Play Magazine (Sep 1921 - Feb 1922)

66 The Screen in Review Whatever merit there is in "The Lure of Jade" sliouU be credited to Pauline Fredericic She seems younger and more vital than ever before. scolding men a lot in the best-selling novels these days. There was "Mr. Waddington of Wyck," and later there was "Vera." Now comes Lois Weber with a stern scenario lecture for the sex which she calls "What Do Men Want?" You might have guessed from the title that it was written and directed by a woman. For no man would have the courage to ask such a question, much less answer it, in six reels. It pains me to report that Miss Weber thinks men want — or lack — intelligence. She shows a husband who is always chasing rainbows and who doesn't learn that what he really wants is sense enough to appreciate his home until he has nearly lost it. It takes one patient wife, one vamp, one betrayed girl, and any number of kiddies to teach him the value of these things. I like to think that he finally gained intelligence in the last reel, but, alas, I have only a subtitle's word for it. "Fightin' Mad." This is undoubtedly the fisrhtinge? picture ever screened. It is William Desmond as a cowboy, back from the war, who stages the battles, all single-handed, and mostly victorious. Now, of course, when you have a hero who fights all the time, the next thing you need is a sweet young girl who will make him promise not to fight. So along she comes in the person of Doris Pawn and the plot is off. He rescues her from a band of Mexican kidnapers in a surrounding background of cactus, sand, and stampeding cattle. The casualty list among the Mexicans is something awful, but William Desmond doesn't seem to mind. In fact, he enjoys his violent enCounters as thoroughly as his author intended he should. And to think that the last time we saw him he was a peaceful and pious young clergyman ! "The Wonderful Thing." This picture has what the city editor of any newspaper would recognize as "news value." Of course the really important thing is that it features Norma Talmadge and that she is radiant and tragic by turns in her own Aprilday manner. But this is no news to the fans. So the headlines belong to Mrs. Lydig Hoyt, who is the first of New York's upper-ten society set to try her fortunes in the films. She was brave enough to take for her debut a most unsympathetic and thankless role — that of the heartless sister who persecutes a modern Cinderella. What moments it had gave evidence of being cut unmercifully so that we saw Mrs. Hoyt only in sudden, fleeting glimpses. These were enough, however, to indicate that she has that rarest of qualities, film magnetism. Furthermore, it was a relief to see a "society lady" played as a matter of ^course. So many of our screen society folk register aristocracy by looking down their nose and crooking their little finger in a gesture as haughty as it is not refined. As for Miss Talmadge, she gives a new and refreshing interpretation of a little French bride. Her husband, whom she adores, has married her for her money and brought her into a home of frigid and merciless relatives. Her ingratiating manner of winning the entire family, including the husband, makes up another of those romances which begin after marriage instead of before. "Peacock Alley." The long-awaited first production made by Mae Murray's own company, has at last been screened, and every one who likes her pictures at all will like this one particularly. She also plays a young French girl, and in her rural scenes she is a demurely Continued on page 96 Bill Desmond's "Fightin' Mad" is undoubtedly the fightingest picture ever screened, and he seems to enjoy Ills encounters thoroughlv.