Picture Play Magazine (Sep 1923 - Feb 1924)

The Screen in Review 65 the Emancipation Proclamation. Any producer who shows the apple falling on Newton's head is going to clean up. Miss Talmadge wears a great many beautiful costumes in "Ashes of Vengeance" and wears them with great dignity. Her acting is easy and matter-of-fact. Conway Tearle goes through the picture looking very sour on the world but he has neat legs — if a lady may comment on such things — and he fences well. Wallace Beery gives what is known as a "strong performance" in the studios ; that is to say he makes more faces than Emil Jannings. But making faces isn't acting. Not this year. Gloria in Excelsior. I wasn't nearsighted when I saw Gloria .Swanson in "Bluebeard's Eighth Wife." Not half ! Not half ! The theater was crowded with girls who would attend every one of Gloria's pictures even if all the ushers were hungry lions. A wonderful time was had by all. That is, by all except a bereaved man who had seen and enjoyed the play on the stage. All the spicy French comedy of the original play has been carefully removed from the picture, leaving nothing but a fashion parade by Gloria and a few indistinct flashes of some other actors, at present unidentified. My idea of complete obscurity is the role of the leading man who .helps Gloria on and off with her wraps. The Missing Link in Pictures. A pleasant evening is in store for the boys in the insane asylum when "Red Lights" comes along. The lads who think they are Sherlock Holmes can try to puzzle out why Goldwyn purchased the notorious stage flop, "The Rear Car." Said play failed gloriously and conspicuously all last season. "Red Lights," alas, is nothing so inspiring as an underworld melodrama. Words fail me when I try to describe the plot. It has more clutching hands and hidden, menaces than a Pearl White serial. The characters are always crawling out from under rugs or falling off the back of trains. The picture has one thrill to recommend it. A private car is cut loose from the back of a train and slides down a long incline at terrible speed. Unfortunately, it isn't wrecked and the cast is saved. "Red Lights" has all the fine flourish and the outward show of a great melodrama. But it was filmed with such a hash of a plot that if you try to reason it out you are apt to worry yourself into a nervous breakdown. Asleep in the Deep. After making a great fuss over all the big pictures, it is pretty hard to come down to earth and record the doings of the producers who haven't heard the good news about screen improvement. The end of the world, however, is not at hand because there are still plenty of directors making old pictures in the old way. Maurice Tourneur, for instance, had the chance of a lifetime in "The Brass Bottle." F. Anstey, the author, allowed his imagination to rove in pleasant pastures A wonderful time is had by all who go to see Gloria Swanson in "Bluebeard's Eighth Wife" except those who enjoyed the stage play. when he wrote the story of a modern young man who has an Oriental jinni for a servant. But Tourneur couldn't keep up with the possibilities of a tale that might have taken the edge off Douglas Fairbanks' production, "The Thief of Bagdad." Goodness knows, Tourneur got help enough from Harry Myers, Ernest Torrence and Ford Sterling, who do their best to be funny. But nine-tenths of the comedy fails to get across because the director didn't have the imagination to dig it out for you. Johnny Hines is so dead set on being comic in "Little Johnny Jones" that he ends up> by throwing you into a fit of the sulks. The screen adaptation of George M. Cohan's play goes to such lengths to be light and breezy farce that it nearly blows away entirely. The original comedy of the show was out-ofdate anyway and the stuff the director put in to make it funny only made matters worse. Still, there is no telling what people will laugh at and the fine line between good slapstick and vulgar slapstick is an indistinct one. Somewhere, as in an awful dream, I saw a picture called "Marriage Morals." Can it be that it was at one of the Broadway theaters ? Yes, yes ; it was ! And it all comes back to me — too vividly. Business of presenting William, Nigh, the director, with the handsome hand-crocheted automobile tire. A poor little girl in a beauty shop is loved by a wild, bad boy. Going to sleep one night, as was her custom-, she dreams that they are married. Zing ! Out comes the champagne. Zowie ! Along come the wild Continued on page 100