Picture Play Magazine (Mar-Aug 1927)

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The Screen in Review peace and happiness. Louise Dre~sev. as usual, plays an erringmother with twitching lips b?1l„ ■ j silence, and Rockcliffe Fellowes, Jason Robards, and 1*"*" antschi oblige with good performances. £ Just Foolin' Marion Davies is a rollicking Dutch girl in "The Red Mill," and so completely creates the illusion of a life on skates, at the churn, and at other homely tasks, that it is difficult to remember that she has done anything else. Which means that she assumes this guise with excellent results, although one wishes the picture were more substantial as to purpose and plot. The production certainly is, with its dikes, windmills, and other verisimilitudes of Holland. Miss Davies is Tina, who falls in love with a visiting American, and who changes clothes with her friend, Gretchen, that the latter may escape marriage with the hateful Governor. The ruse fails, but the resourceful Tina finally sees to it that she and Gretchen are safely in the right arms. Owen Moore, Louise Fazenda, George Siegmann, Karl Dane, and Snitz Edwards keep the ball rolling as best they can. The Unimportance of Garters Gertie's garter isn't important enough to get, and certainly not valuable enough to make a long picture of the process and call it "Getting Gertie's Garter." But it is innocuous entertainment, rather nicely done, and there are some irresistibly amusing moments, to say nothing of some worthy people like Marie Prevost, Charles Ray, Harry Myers, William Orlamond, and Fritzi Ridgeway. Years ago, when the play was done on the stage, the title was thought to be oh, so daring. There's nothing at all daring about the picture. It is even conventional. Which only goes to show that the item of a garter is not what it used to be. In this piece the movement comes from Marie Prevost's farcical efforts to return the bejeweled garter Charles Ray gave her before he became engaged to another. Isn't that shocking? Take It or Leave It If you can see comedy in plentiful close-ups of Charlie Murray, some of them showing him taking castor oil, and all of them disclosing him mugging, ogling, and generally having a wonderful time with the camera, then you will split your sides laughing at "McFadden's Flats." Thousands of persons did when the picture was shown in New York. The doors of the theater had to be opened hours ahead of the usual time, and the picture was held over a second week to enable many to repeat their laughs at the jokes about the Saturday-night bath, the washing of feet, and all the rest of it. However, I don't mind saying the picture was torture for some who saw it, including myself. It's all about an ex-hodcarrier who becomes a contractor, is forced into "society" by his wife and daughter, and so on. It was inspired by a stage hodgepodge that was popular in the cheaper theaters thirty years ago, and probably will make rich men of the producers. Chester Conklin, Edna Murphy, Larry Kent, and Aggie Herring are in it. Innocuous Desuetude A stage antique called "The Wrong Mr. Wright" has been made into a peculiarly mirthless screen farce and the name retained. It is notable for its waste of Jean Hersholt's conspicuous talents. He plays the sappy son of a corset manufacturer named White whose cashier, Wright, absconds to Atlantic City, and for reasons which are not worth going into, White pretends to be Wright. Enid Bennett is a detective whose tactics include vamping, unfortunately, but she does not stand out among a cast made up of wholly uninteresting players. Make-Believe If "New York" were as big as its title there would be something to write about, but it might as well be given the name of any sizable city. It wouldn't mean any more. The fault lies with the story, of course, which is conventional melodrama dealing with Continued on page 98