Picture Play Magazine (Sep 1926 - Feb 1927)

The Screen in Review 65 Genteel Heroics. Adolphe Menjou is a hero — every inch of him — in "The Ace of Cads," instead of a gentleman of doubtful motives as used to be the case. The change is agreeable enough but hardly exciting or convincing, as must always be true of an attempt to crystallize the spirit and style of a Michael Arlen story on the screen. But the characters have Arlen names— high-sounding, Victorian appellations such as Capel Maturin, Sir Guy de Gramercy, and — note the spelling — Eleanour. All move in the rich and rarefied atmosphere of Arlen society where Capcl and Basil, the son of Sir Guy, are brother officers in a crack regiment. Basil cheats our hero out of Eleanour and marries her, while Capel does the gentlemanly thing, resigns from his regiment, and lives abroad. Years later he meets Joan, the daughter of the Gramercys, who is a very modern flapper, and flirts with her. But there is no danger, for Joan reunites her beau with her mother and the death of Basil makes their marriage possible. Alice Joyce plays Eleanour. An airy trifle. Drugs, Drama, and Dreariness. What was thrilling on the stage twenty years ago may be dully commonplace on the screen to-day. In fact, it more often is than isn't. This is especially true of "The City," Clyde Fitch's play which was looked upon as daring when "Florodora" held the boards, but which is only a bore now in the picture of that name. It's all about a blackmailing dope fiend. Time was when drug addicts were known to exist by a limited few, but thanks to the screen we are quite willing nowadays to suspect our grandmother if she dabs her nose with a bit of lavender-scented lace. This particular dopester blackmails the head of a rich family living in a small town, and when the father dies and the family moves to the city the blackmailer follows and mixes himself up in the son's political aspirations. Finally he marries the innocent young daughter of the house, but dies in a frenzy of epileptic acting before that catastrophe goes further. Walter McGrail, Robert Frazer, May Allison, Richard Walling, and Nancy Nash are some of those seen in the picture. Izzy's Irish Rose. You may guess from the title that "Private Izzy Murphy" is one of those delectable novelties mixing Irish and Jewish characters. Right you are. But why, I ask you, did Anne Nichols ever write "Abie's Irish Rose" unless she wished to do the motion-picture producers a good turn and add to their wealth? "Private Izzy Murphy" will no doubt make some one a millionaire — unless the public should suddenly tire of this sort of thing. I'll say they won't. In the first place, a young man named Isadore Patrick Murphy keeps two delicatessens, one in the Jewish quarter and the other in the Irish, thereby serving two publics wholeheartedly. He is in love with Eileen, the daughter of a "meat king." He enters the war, and finally confesses in a letter to her that he isn't Irish at all. The role is played by George Jessel, a Jewish comedian whose race would be apparent to any girl with a thousandth part of Patsy Ruth Miller's discernment. Everything is drawn out to the breaking point in order that Vera Gordon as Iszy's mother may weep, wail, and faint when he goes to war, and that all the other characters may have heaps of footage. Gustav von Seyffertitz is cast as the Irish meat king. That should tell you a lot, but probably won't, if you like the title. What a Princess Will Do. There's more of a story, and a better one, in "So's Your Old Man" than was in W. C. Fields' first starring film. For that reason his gags have more excuse for being, and the picture is more substantial, though it's entertainment of the lightest sort. Fields is Samuel Bisbee, a small-town goof who has invented an unbreakable windshield. Fie is scorned by the townspeople, and his wife and daughter have no standing at all. Yet his quaintness and awkwardness appeal to the bored and troubled Princess Lescaboura on a long railway journey, and she sets the town by the ears when she s ops off for the purpose of visiting her "old friend Continued on page 104 "Syncopating Sue."