Picture-Play Magazine (Mar-Aug 1926)

The Screen in Review 57 Syd Chaplin in Skirts Again. Ever since "Charley's Aunt," Sydney Chaplin has found it difficult to keep out of skirts. Having provoked laughter once in them, he seems to feel that he will be three times as funny the third time he wears them. Unfortunately, this isn't so. In "Oh ! What a Nurse !" a story written by Robert Sherwood — that very excellent motion-picture critic who writes for Life and McCall's Magazine, and who, by the way, is more often right than anv other critic I have read — Mr. Chaplin goes through a series of sure-fire gags one right after another. The storv is a good one, the gags are funny, and so, sometimes, is Mr. Chaplin. That is to say, the first time he tossed a glass of liqueur into the fireplace and it exploded, I laughed. The second and third times, I did not laugh so hard. Anyway, I hope that his next picture will see him in trousers again, or at least in bloomers. From Crook to Special Agent. Whether H. B. Warner is a master criminal or not, he is the one man I'd follow from theater to theater, after all these years of my faithful devotion to crook melodrama. In "Whispering Smith," released by Producers Distributing Corporation, he is a hunter of criminals, instead of a criminal. But it doesn't really make any difference, as long as he doesn't leave the underworld entirely. "Whispering Smith" is an exciting" story of a wicked railroad foreman who loots wrecks and divides the proceeds with his hardhearted and heavy-handed band. Whispering Smith is called on to establish order, and then all the /"'^L troubles start. jjg^l Smith is in love with the outlaw's wife, so you can see how things would appear if he were to shoot j^sT^^A him. ! won't tell you the story — it is (writing ^ffa enough to be worth seeing. There is a very fine railroad wreck, and an unusually good cast, including Libyan Tashman, Lillian Rich, John Bowers, and Robert Edeson, not to mention, again, that erstwhile gentleman crook, H. B. Warner. Smoke from "Abie's Irish Rose." The American flag used to be waved at the end of ever} bad vaudeville act that was uncertain of applause on its own merits. Now, sure-fire approval is courted by assembling a u number of Jews and Irishmen on the same stage, amicablv talking together. There were the stage ^jj^r plays, "Abie's Irish Rose" and "Kosher Kitty Kelly," and now there is the picture, "The Cohens and ^| Kellys." I think thev are all perfectly terrible. My only advice to you about this picture is to stay away from it. The members of the cast deserved a better story. Charles Murray, that overworked man, is cast as the Irish father, George Sidney, a very good actor, is the Jewish father. Both of them are called upon for impossible slapstick. Vera Gordon and Kate Price are also in the cast. Back to the Tropics. Florence Vidor, Jack Holt, George Bancroft, and Mack Swain are the principals in a pleasant, tropical film of East Africa, called "Sea Horses." But George Bancroft almost steps over the principal boundary and }fifflS^^K& becomes the star. After his victorious deJA*_J]m but in "The Pony Express," Mr. Bancroft — -npL^gB --J^r won't remain in the background. In "Sea JUBBb Horses," he attacks, the natives and cap ^^^^^ tures their cannon with a slow and easy going manner that baffles them. Although he starts in as something of a villain, he sacrifices himself in the end, in order that the heroine may marry the captain of an English boat. Miss Vidor is very good as his wife, and Jack Holt is the spick-and-span captain. [Continued on page 110] Ibdnez's "Torrent." "Sea Horses.