Picture-Play Magazine (Mar-Aug 1927)

64 The Screen in Review "For Wives Only. "Stepping Along." "The Winning of Barbara Worth." "The Blonde Saint." Little is required of Ronald Colman beyond being on the scene, and the same can be said of Vilma Banky. However, she achieves the doubtful distinction of creating the dressiest Western heroine ever seen on the screen. Always lovely to look at, her filmy, expensive daintiness is ridiculous when you think of it as desert garb, and when the villain speaks of her as a "desert waif" you feel all the more that Vilma is ready to shine at a Buckingham Palace garden party, and with not a particle of sand in her hair. Mr. Meighan Comes Across. Thomas Meighan 's "The Canadian" is good because it is a study of character. Played at slow tempo, it nevertheless holds one's attention until the end and, incidentally, offers Meighan his best role in many moons — far better, it seems to me, than the one he had in "Tin Gods." He is Frank Taylor, a worker in the wheat fields of Northwestern Canada, and he doesn't turn out to be a British nobleman or even a philanthropist. He remains a man of the soil. His employer is Ed Marsh, an Englishman of good family who has married Gertie and adapted himself to the rough-and-ready life of the outdoors. Ed's sister, Nora, comes from London to join them because of financial reverses, and rebels at the ugliness of her new environment. Frank's uncouthness repels her, and she quarrels with Gertie. Finally, in sheer desperation, she marries Frank to escape Gertie, and then when the chance suddenly comes to go back to England she decides to stay with him. From the start the picture moves forward — slowly, but interestingly— and is well worth seeing. Meighan is sincere and convincing, and Mona Pal ma is appropriately icy as Nora. Wyndham Standing, absent from the screen for some time, returns to play Ed skillfully, and Dale Fuller is capital as the vixenish Gertie. Charles Winninger, the stage comedian, scores as a farm laborer. Family Life on Long Island. "The Great Gatsby" doesn't deserve the adjective, but it is interesting because of excellent acting and a rather unusual, though none-too-pleasant, story. With Warner Baxter, Lois Wilson, Neil Hamilton, Georgia Hale, and William Powell in the cast, something is bound to happen — and it does. Jay Gatsby, a fellow of doubtful antecedents, is in love with Daisy, a girl far above him, and leaves for the war feeling they are married, although no ceremony has been performed. Daisy marries another in his absence. Gatsby returns to become one of Long Island's spectacular entertainers. No one knows where his money comes from, but he doesn't lack for guests on that account. Daisy's cousin brings them together again, and their blighted romance gets a fresh start, while the private life of Daisy's husband is shown to be awfully seamy. Gatsby comes to a tragic end, and Daisy somehow sees happiness ahead with her profligate husband. Warner Baxter makes Gatsby a living figure, and William Powell is quietly magnificent as a garage mechanic, but Lois Wilson, given a bob, a jag. and a bathtub scene, scarcely gets away from her wrenlike self. The Hot Blood of Sicily. Sicily is no place fdr saints, blond or otherwise, but in placing most of the action in "The Blonde Saint" there, the author did a great deal to concoct an entertaining picture. Lewis Stone is Sebastian Maure, a cynical author who, when rebuffed by Doris Kenyon, decides to bring her to her senses by abducting her from a steamer and taking her to near-by Sicily. There they become involved in colorful melodrama with lots of thrills, and Doris is quite willing to yield to Sebastian's mastery. Every one in the picture is good. Gilbert Roland and Ann 'Rork playing the juvenile roles with considerable charm — enough, in fact, on Roland's part to give me high hopes for his Annand opposite Norma Talmadge's Camille, and to make me be on the lookout for Miss Rork's next film. Brawn and Sinew. In "The Flaming Forest" you will find an authentic picture of western Canada in 1850, when that vast tract was without ordered