Old English (Warner Bros.) (1930)

ADVERTISEMENT Two Column Ad—Style K—Cut or Mat ee Feature “STANDS LIKE ANCIENT OAK,” SAYS CRITIC OF ARLISS George Arliss in “Old English,” at In a recent number of “Motion Picture,” Herbert Cruikshank, 4 modern critic worthy of the ancient and honorable name he bears, vividly portrays the impression made upon him by George Arliss, now at CROs oo Theatre, in the Warner Bros. and Vitaphone version of Sir John Galsworthy’s “Old English.” After a prolonged Hollywood diet of Mlle. Kane’s boop-a-doop, Mr. Jolson’s mammy-songs, Mr. Nagel’s Kiwanian cooings, and the rhythmic cud-chewing of Contented Claras, ‘God gave me twenty cents (15 and 5) taxi-fare and an assignment to see George Arliss. It came like manna from the movie heavens. Here, after the hennaed highlights of Hollywood and raw gin aged in the wood-alcohol, was lace and lavender and the rare aroma of amontillado. An “Old English” atmosphere, if you like, with Milord of Beaconsfield, himself, mon ocle and all, blending perfectly into a background of shadowed mellow i ARLISS George Arliss has done for talking pictures what Booth and Irving accomplished for the theatre. —Herbert Cruikshank. What a Grand Old Sinner He Was this, he says, will come. Hannen Swaffer, London’s bad boy critic of the theatre, recently relieved himself of the somewhat rash statement that the old fellows of his day, Irving and Kean and others, “ranted” and “mouthed.” He quoted Sir Nigel Playfair’s Hammersmith Ho! as indisputable authority. Far from being surprised, I wonder that it hasn’t been said before, and by sounder men |than Swaffer. I have never heard Kean or Irving or Booth or ForbesRobertson, but I haven’t the slightest doubt but that all of them both “ranted” and “mouthed,” for I have never heard a dyed-in-the-wool stage actor who didn’t. But why should this fact just be discovered now? Possibly—I speak as a resident of Hollywood — possibly because, from Euripides to Shakespeare, from Beaumont and Fletcher to Sheridan, to Ibsen, (and I must emphasize it) to Shaw, from the Golden Age of Greece down through all the centuries to our own benighted time, none of them before now ever had the opportunity to A grand romance of a gentleman of Se a ES the old who taught the genera Current WORLD WAR HEROES PARODY: WE’RE IN THE TALKIES NOW school, younger tion a few tricks! When Murray Kinnell, for twentythree years an actor on the legitimate stage, was given the role of Charles Ventnor, one of the menaces in “Old English,” now playing at thon Theatre, it meant that two great events were just around the corner in the actor’s life. One was his screen debut, “Old English” being his first picture, either talking or silent. The other was an unexpected reunion with several British soldiers, who, like Kinnell, were with Allenby in Palestine. The cast of “Old English” is almost entirely English. Kinnell was born in London, and during the war was a member of the London Scotties. Practically the first person he met upon arriving at the Warner Bros. studios in Hollywood was a former aide de camp to his divisional officer, General Shea of the 60th Division in Palestine under Allenby. He next met Henry Morrell, who plays Meller, servant to George Arliss in “Old English,” and who also was in Palestine during its famous conquering. As a final touch to the reunion, Theatre Now ness. After all, one does not spend the first thirty years of life in Britain without becoming imbued with the conservatism of a country that has watched centuries come and go. And George Arliss is a conservative. In Hollywood, his home is in a quiet spot where grass grows on the tennis-courts, and whoopee is the -war-cry of the Red Indians. His New York residence lies far to the East, with the spacious acres of Central Park fending off the fury of Broadway. ‘The walls are lined with books—which have their pages Kinnell found among the stockholdcut — and Cruikshank etchings, | ©"S in the opening scenes, the worth many times their weight in? colonel of his own regiment, provgold, the frames included. His home ing conclusively, the actor has dein England must be flanked by cided, that Hollywood is indeed the lawns which generations of gardencrossroads of the world. ers have rolled, and rolled, for five The cast of the George Arliss hundred years. stage vehicle also includes Doris = Lloyd, Betty Lawford, Reginald ike Unto an Oak Sheffield, Leon Janney and Ivan Something of all this is what Simpson. Alfred E. Green directed. George Arliss has brought to the cinema. He stands like an ancient oak, which softens with its protective shadows the crass, crude sears of a too-new, too-recent realestate-development dwelling. He Sylvanus has done for the screen what Booth | wily, and Irving accomplished for the | vivant, a man proud of his indetheatre. pendence and of England that gave Incidentally, it is his belief that| him birth—such is the character the new hope of advancement for| George Arliss portrays in “Old the new medium is bound up in the| English,” the Warner Bros. and improvement of its personnel. And| Vitaphone. picture now at the eas Theatre. Current HEART OF OAK Heythorp, old roue, irrascible, a gourmond, a bon Warner Bros. Present George Arliss in “OLD ————— Feature ARLISS SCREEN PORTRAYAL WINS TALKING PICTURE APPROVAL OF GALSWORTHY AND SHAW ENGLISH” pa ane = hear his “mouthing” and “ranting” through the microphone. There seems no other reasonable explanation. But now comes the motion picture, and with it the microphone, and one of the theatre’s most revolutionary changes of all time takes place. From the declamatory and gesticulatory thespianism of even twenty years ago, We find on every hand actors and actresses striving with might and main to act again like normal human beings—not so voice and gesture will carry out over a long and crowded auditorium of often hopeless acoustics, but for an audience of one which catches their faintest whisper and magnifies it and throws it out, if need be, across a_ great auditorium that would swallow seven or eight of the playhouses of former times. And so it will not seem such a far cry, perhaps, to speak in one preath of Kean and Irving, and in the next of the Warner Brothers’ lot in Hollywood, and of George Arliss, who is there pusily engaged in revolutionizing the technic of poth the stage and the motion pictures. I had gone there one afternoon to watch him in some of his scenes for Galsworthy’s “Old English,” and came upon the stage at a time that hardly could have been better suited to my purpose. For not Arliss alone, but Arliss and Otis Skinner and Wilton Lackaye and Winthrop Ames all were there—three of them grouped in a corner where some enterprising reporter was getting a picture of them, while the fourth, Ames, leaned on his stick and looked benignly on. I am no sentimentalist in such matters, as you may well suppose, but grand old men of the stage they seemed to me; and grander, I was willing to think, by very reason of their desire to leave the old for the new. Not that anyone is to suppose that they are bending over backward in their effort to change from their old ways. That would not be possible. But until it is recognized that the stage is quite another thing from the motion picture, we will have stage plays and stage players; and if we are to have these plays and players, it is far better to have the best than some of the mediocre ones Broadway is sending us. And the reason why we will have the best can be traced directly to George Arliss’s ‘Disraeli.’ For it was after viewing this picture that both Galsworthy and Shaw agreed to allow their plays to be filmed. FRANK DAUGHERTY in “The Film Spectator.” IVAN, NOT SO TERRIBLE, ACCORDING TO ARLISS For the third consecutive time, Ivan Simpson plays in a Vitaphone production in support of George Arliss. The _ talented plays an important role in “Old English,’ now at the Theatre, in which Warner Brothers star George Arliss. Simpson’s role is that of Joseph Pillin, the aged and pesstmistic friend of the hero, the same char acterization he did on the stage for | several years with Mr. Arliss. Simpson also played important supporting roles with Mr. Arliss in “Disraeli” and “The Green Goddess.”’ character actor |, ET SS oe re— OOOO For Programs and Papers Just Out Girl (in bookshop)—‘T would like a book.” 4 Assistant—‘Something ligh Girl—“It doesn’t matter. Daa 2 carry it home.”—Answers. * * * This the Reason? Al—“I wonder why a Scotchman always says ‘hae’ for ‘have’?” Sal—“Possibly it’s on account of his thrift. He saves a ‘v’ every time he does it.”—London Opinion. a * * Lusty Language Lady: “Isn’t it wonderful how a single policeman can dam the flow of traffic?” Boy: “Yes, grannie; but you should hear the bus drivers.” —London Tattler. = = bd Same Old Thing “What is your reason for wishing to marry my daughter, young man Be “J have no reason sir. I am in love.” —Punch. * * * A Sporting Proposition Wife—“I’ve put your shirt on the clotheshorse, Jim.” Jim—“What odds did you get?” —Passing Show. s 2 S Willing to Oblige He was rushing for a car when 2 pretty young woman stopped him. “Pjease help the Working Girls’ Home” she requested. “Certainly,” he said, “but I haven’t much time. How far away do they live?”—London Opinion. ADVERTISEMENT WARNER BROS. PRESENT georye ARLISS What a Grand Old Sinner He Was Direct from its $2 run on Broadway! 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