Illicit (Warner Bros.) (1931)

10 UNCONVENTIONAL HEROINE OF “ILLICIT” GIVES PERSONAL OPINIONS ON BEING MARRIED Traditional and Experimental Views of Matrimony Come to Blows in Warner Bros. New Film, **Tllicit’’ Soon Seen at the Theatre BARBARA STANWYCK IS MRS. FRANK FAY Interesting Side Lights on the Marital Relation Given By Broadway Star Who Plays Leading Part {Plant This Interesting Sunday Feature—Ed.) By MILTON HARRIS A bitter duel to the death between the long tested practices of marriage and the daringly experimental innovations of the matrimonial restless is carried out in a new film which will be offered movie fans in the near future. Those in Hollywood who generally see pre-views of pictures months before the film is released, are discussing the various questions raised in the cinematic drama which Warner Bros. have made under the title of “Illicit.” The writer is among those who at Warner Bros. present “ILLICIT,” A Vitaphone Production Is She Different? Is She Startling? Is She Beautiful? Yesi DOES SHE Want To Marry? Approve of Divorce? She has her own ideas about love! Strange but very interesting! See for yourself! tended a private showing of this picture, and can report that marriage as an institution is subjected to a pretty severe gruelling before it emerges victorious. The lady of this Vitaphone play, the heroine I mean, is a modern lass, bright as a new penny, who has accepted the idea current among the sophisticated that it is clever to scoff at the ties that, bind. | New Love Angle Barbara Stanwyck has this tasking role, and the picture opens with a scene between herself and her sweetheart, with whom she is involved in what is called a liaison, and more commonly an affair. But here’s the rub. Generally the man and credible. The picture is breezy as a Spring day, and a lightness of humor gives a play even to the section when the girl revolts and insists on remaining unmarried to the man she adores. | Star’s Personal Slant | So captivating is the performance of Miss Stanwyck, that I took advantage of the first opportunity to get her ideas both on the pieture and on her views of matters matrimonial. She laughed off the idea that she might possibly subscribe to the views momentarily advocated by her in the role. “Why you know, an actress wouldn’t be worth her galt if she “in the case is the cad; he is taking | couldn’t understand and portray 7 7 : 1 the conventional and. nnegnventional sides of life,” she re marked. “It’s imagination that did ssa sac wuillal 18 tue ViCctimized, the helpless. Warner Bros. have introduced a brand-new twist in the old scheme of this idea. the man who is imploring the girl to get married. And it is the girl with her store of new ideas, who stubbornly refuse. Even the man’s fathef comes to plead for marriage. You must agree that here is something new in the way of plot. The woman is the resourceful type prevalent in our time. She has the socalled advanced ideas and she plays with them juggler-like. Now she flashes in the air four multi-colored balls which might be called freedom, marriage, love, captivity. She tosses them, sometime playing with the ball of marriage, then removing that, and captivity, till only love and freedom remain. | Does What She Fears But life has a way of demonstrating that the old is good, not because people say so, but because it has been tried and tested in the alembic of experience. And in the end the lady of the modern ideas, who has had a gorgeous time with her freedom, gracefully yields and falls back for protection into the arms of a husband. This drama is certain, if the writer may venture into prophecy, to create much interest. It is the type of film which always gets itself talked about, and which the rank and file of movie lovers, and those who are called, and call themselves sophisticates, find worth while. Marriage Tested Its characters are the well-to-do Long Island crowd with its wealth, country houses, and brilliance. But the drama is age-old; we were going to say as old as Adam and Eve but recollected ourselves in time. The theme is particularly pointed today, when marriage as an institution is having a pretty stiff fight, though no one in his senses can say it is even in the slightest danger of being exterminated from the ‘cial scene. The whole theme in the picture is treated sparklingly. It is a light and airy defy at the Gibraltar strong institution of marriage. The capitulation is graceful, convincing \ It is the work, and I can only say that if my performance in ‘Illicit? was so thorough as to deceive you into thinking I must hold the views of anti-marriage, why then I think it’s a graceful compliment, and you have my thanks. | Most Marriages Take “No, I can understand the type, and that’s about all. Marriage may at this day be more subjected to critical consideration than formerly, but I hardly think that any sensible person would doubt its validity in the scheme of things. It was, it is and it will continue to be the only sensible system for guaranteeing happiness and for insuring the proper care and protection to the young. “You know, there’s always the danger of having a wrong and distorted view of life as a whole by reading sensational accounts, specially spiced, of the peccadilloes of our Don Juans and Shebas and of hearing so much about divorces. Of course, marriages can be more easily dissolved today than ever before, but for every marriage that goes blotto, there are fifty that are secure and well-founded. Only, you never hear of the happily married; they don’t get into print. 4 | Fortress of Society “It makes me think of the remark of some historian who said that the happiest nations are those without a history. Applying this statement to marriage, one could say that the happy homes are those that have no history,—that is, so far as the world is concerned. The mass of the world still believes in marriage which has been tested over a period of thousands of years. It doesn’t seem to me that the restlessness of one age can avail in destroying this well-built fortress of society. “As a matter of fact, the two principal characters in ‘Illicit,’ are people perfectly mated and destined for marriage. It only happens that the girl has absorbed ideas of independence and is trying hard to put them into practice. The Dicture is by no means a morality: it Cast Also Includes Charles Butterworth, James Rennie, Ricardo Cortez,: Joan Blondell, Natalie Moorehead. BARBARA STANWYCK with 1931’s Surprise Star A WARNER BROS. VITAPHONF PICTURE \ Theatre Name EY portrayed are bound in the end to defer to marriage. The man is profoundly hurt when he learns that his sweetheart is being sullied by gossiping tongues. Yet he knows that the world has grounds for talking, and he makes a heroic effort to vanquish the ideas of his beloved. In the end he succeeds; though perhaps it would be truer shows how two people of the type 'to say that she succeeds, for she Cut No. 7—Cut, 60c; Mat, 15c 519 Lines has a sudden revulsion from the miscellany of ideas she has acquired, and which never were part and parcel of her.” Barbara Stanwyck is a poised lady of the screen, who in private life is the wife of Frank Fay. And in “Illicit” she is a poised lady; the only lack of poise is in her that act as an explosive to her sweetheart, and that threaten to devastate their chance of being happy. When you see her in the part, you will be convinced, I know, that she is in real life the replica of the lady she interprets. But, don’t be deceived: she is really the oppo site; she hasn’t @ soupcon of a doubt that marriage is the only solution. And for illustration, she will point to her own happy marriage.