Picture Play Magazine (Mar-Aug 1926)

67 in Review with the assistance of Felix the Cat. Benson endeavor to live up to them, realty does become successful. This is by all means the best comedy of the month. Reginald Denny is a trifle too plump as Skinner. Laura LaPlante is the wife. I know of a no more engagingsight than that of Mr. Denny learning the Charleston. This is a happy, inconsequential, thoroughly enjoyable picture, with a story that is so good that T expect to see it done over again every ten years. More of the Younger Generation. Colleen Moore, in "We Moderns," is again an impudent, independent example of the young folk of today. Here is a young lady, not especially pretty, with a hidden charm that I cannot quite locate. I only know that I like her in whatever picture she is in, and that is saying a good deal. Miss Moore this time is the dau of Sir Robert and Lady Kitty Sundale. Left to her own devices by her parents, she seems in a fair way of arriving at no good end. She loses her heart. to Oscar Pleat, a drawing-room poet, and being a modern young miss, she determines to get him. Getting him turns out hazardous business, but over the lions in Trafalgar Square, and becomingmore or less intimate with the po tooed Countess,"' from which it was adapted. In the book, which was written by Carl van Vechten, the tattoo mark did not really exist and was only symbolical, but in the picture, the tattoo is real. This expresses the whole tone of the production. It is all a verv clumsy affair. Clowning and drama have become hopelessly mingled, with Miss Negri occasionally brilliant, and at other times unbelievably dull. The fun is heavy, and the drama light. Chester Conklin's mustache is a masterpiece, but a slightly miscast masterpiece. The preceding scenes do not prepare you for its spectacular debut. The story jumps from the Riviera to Maple Valley, presumably in Indiana, and here the Countess fails in love with thedistrict attorney. We are told that she has journeyed to Maple Valley to economize, but her lavish display of jewels left me a little doubtful about that. Malcolm St. Clair, the director, seems to have been more interested in putting across his slapstick than in sticking to his story, but then, the story being what it is, I don't much blame him. to be a after climbing lice force, she manages to hide herself under the young gentleman's bed. Fortunately, he falls in love with her. Not much of a story, you will admit, and yet the sprightly, very-much-alive Miss Moore manages to pull it out of the totalloss class. It was adapted from the stage play by Israel Zangwill. ft Betty Bronson as the little waif in "A Kiss for Cinderella." Leon Errol Again. Leon Errol and his unreliable knee both appear in "Clothes Make the Pirate." Mr. Errol is "Tremblc-at-Evil" Tidd, a timid, imposed-upon little tailor, who staggers drunkenly from his shop to a pirate ship and sets sail under the black flag. Though all else fails, his knee never does, and when he is dressed in his mail-order pirate's best, and it folds under him so that he corkscrews down to the deck, the delighted screams of the audience could be heard for blocks. ''Clothes Make the Pirate" is a light burlesque on the storybook Captain Kidd. And even though it is all in fun, some of the nautical scenes, stagy as they are, manage to be really thrilling. Mr. Errol makes the picture, although Dorothy Gish, James Rennie, and Edna Murphy contribute to a pleasant little love story. But the knee is really the thing. Potpourri of Pola. 'A Woman of the World," starring Pola Negri, is very, very faintly reminiscent of the book, "The Tat Theda Bara Returns. When I saw "The Unchastened Woman" and realized that it was actually Theda Bara's return to the screen, and not just one of her old pictures, my amazement knew no bounds. I ft. had to be told over and over again H that I was actually seeing a picture made within the past year, and even now, I don't quite believe it. I have heard that Miss Bara has signed up with Hal Roach comedies, and this film might well be the first one. Certainly, it is not the same play in which Emily Stevens disported herself so decadently. Miss Bara's vamping is so childish that it is almost wholesome. The picture is filled with such titles as "Caroline, little mother, won't you let me tell you how much I need you?" and "Men are just boys grown older, and I guess I can take good care of my two boys." The rest of the picture is vulgar, badly directed, badly acted, and in every way perfectly hopeless. I enjoyed it. Go Back to Erin. "Irish Luck" is a picture undoubtedly made for the Celtic charms of Mr. Meighan. He has every opportunity to disport himself as a broth of a boy. and my only objections are that he refuses to disport. In fact, recently, Mr. Meighan has been refusing to do almost everything, includingacting. And in "Irish Luck," he walks through his parts — he plays a dual role — in a sonambulistic sort of way. Tom Donahue, a young traffic policeman, is sent to Ireland as the winner of a popularity contest. Once in Dublin, he finds that he has a double, a Lord Fitzhugh, and his pleasure trip is transformed overnight into an adventure. He saves Lord FitzhugJi's life, and falls in love with his sister, and I judge, never returns to the force.