Picture Play Magazine (Sep 1926 - Feb 1927)

64 The Screen in Review "We're in the Navy Now." "The Magician." "Everybody's Acting. " Paul Wegener wins the acting honors as Haddo. It is a role that Jannings himself would have found worthy Of his talents, and his German compatriot is superb in it. Alice Terry has little to do, but is always significant. Ivan Petrovich, the Serbian Oliver, is handsome, authoritative and sincere, but it is Wegener who is given the biggest opportunities. When a Lady Chews Gum. Credit Corinne Griffith with a sprightly characterization in "Syncopating Sue," and give her all the praise due a beauty who submerges that gift in a role alien to her. The picture itself is a diverting and lively comedy, and in my opinion is better than ''Classified" because it does not trifle with a well-known story, but is something that can be judged on its own merits. Susan Adams is a gum-chewing, lounging girl who pounds out songs in a music shop. She aspires to the stage and goes so far as to be given a try-out bv Arthur Bennett, a theatrical producer, but fails miserably. Whoever heard of a heroine who falls down on such a task, and makes you laugh at her feeble attempts to emote? This scene is the keynote of the picture, and the rest of it is made up of many such departures from conventionality, with chuckles and laughs galore. The entire cast is beyond criticism. Tom Moore in especial achieving richly as Eddie Murphy, the trap drummer who adores Susan, and it is nice to see little Joyce Compton sparkle as Marge, Susan's flapper sister. These Gobs Have Fun. "We're in the Navy Now" is uproarious comedy — low, vigorous comedy, minus subtlety but put over with skill, plus. Wallace Beery and Raymond Hatton. that inimitable pair, are a couple of gobs who get into all manner of scrapes while serving as rookies on a battleship. That's enough to tell of the story, because it doesn't matter at all. What is important is found in the fact that Beery and Hatton are in almost every scene, and even when they are not the fun never lags because Chester Conklin, Tom Kennedy, and a lot of others are good for a laugh, aided and abetted by Edward Sutherland's adroit direction, and as inspired a set of titles as ever gave point to a picture. Donald Keith and Lorraine Eason contribute the "love" interest, but again I say that the comedians are the stars, and justly so. Perfectly Proper After All. Don't let the title, "Midnight Lovers," keep you away from the picture unless you wish to punish the producers for their breach of taste. Really, it's quite good, and a comedy, too, verging upon hilarity at times, and when I tell you that the lovers — husband and wife — are Lewis Stone and Anna O. Nilsson you will gather that the picture is respectable, for all the implication of sub rosa amours in the title. Boiled down, the story has to do with an impulsive girl who marries a flying ace during a lull in the war, and her willingness to believe he isn't true to her when he returns to France. She amuses herself with an interior decorator, and when eventually taken to task by her husband she protests her innocence and says he was more like a "sister" to her. This is the keynote of the picture, in tempo, titles, and action. All concerned give an excellent account of themselves, including John Roche who achieves a funny characterization as the decorator. A Limehouse Cutie. "London" presents Dorothy Gish as Mavis Hogan, a soubrette of the slums who does all the things that such characters did ten vears ago in similar films, and who further conforms to pattern by being "adopted" by a rich and lonely old lady because Mavis reminds her of her dead Eleanor, It is hardly necessary to say that Mavis marries the juvenile. "London" was written especially for the screen by Thomas Burke, whose story was responsible for D. W. Griffith's "Broken Blossoms," but the responsibility for the new picture is somethingevery one concerned in it should make every possible effort to avoid.