Screenland (Oct 1923-Mar 1924)

THREE NEW HITS: HOLLYWOOD, THE FIGHTING BLADE AND LITTLE OLD, NEW YORK cir SCREENPLAYS A ny cinema month revealing such screenplays as Little Old Nezv York, The Green Goddess, The Fighting Blade and The White Sister is an unusual one. I can't recall such a varied month in a long time. If only for the reason that it presents an extraordinary advance upon the part of Marion Davies, Little Old New York deserves your attention. For this story of Manhattan in 1807 is more a triumph for Miss Davies than a landmark of celluloid advance. Miss Davies' Fine Performance Indeed, the can recall when Miss Davies couldn't act. legend that she is merely pretty and isn't an actress still persists here and there. But her Patricia O'Day ought to hand that idea a knockout, for here is a performance sparkling with delightful comedy and touched with at least two or three movingly pathetic moments. Not only can Miss Davies troop but she is fast becoming the one real comedienne of our silversheet. Little Old New York isn't much on • story, if it is long on background. Rida Johnson Young's original play was pretty slender. But you are permitted to see Robert Fulton trying to get backing for the making of the first steamboat, Lorenzo Delmonico selling sandwiches from a basket, John Jacob Astor dealing in furs and pianos and Cornelius Vanderbilt engaged in running a ferry between Staten Island and the Battery. To this new land comes a little Irish girl masquerading as a boy in order that she may inherit a fortune. How she falls in love with her young guardian and is forced to confess her deception constitutes the opus. Now, of course, there isn't much illusion to Patricia's masquerade. You must either accept it as a pleasant little thrust at entertainment or miss the humor with which Miss Davies invests the adventure. I think you'll find her de42 CT& Month's Best Photoplays CL Hollywood CC Little Old New York C The Green Goddess CI, The Fighting Blade <L The White Sister lightful. There are things about Little Old New York that hit me wrong. I think it was a mistake to have well-known actors play historical characters. Sam Hardy's Cornelius Vanderbilt is never anything but G. Rufus Wallingford to me. And we resent the introduction of "The Star Spangled Banner" into the picture, thereby dragging an audience to its feet in order to put over a patriotic climax. Colorful Story of Old Manhattan §)till, Little Old New York is very nicely done by Sidney Olcott. You will be interested in the scene of the first trial trip of the "Clarmont." You will find that Olcott keeps his canvas in skillful and colorful movement. But, best of all, I am sure you will like Miss Davies' playing of the harumscarum, impudent and roguish Patricia in trousers. I congratulate her upon the way she does it without all the conventional prettying. After seeing her Patricia I'm sure her forte is comedy. Having mentioned Mr. Olcott, the director, I turn naturally to his other success of the month, the visualization of William Archer's The Green Goddess. In its celluloid form this is bully entertainment. Archer, as you probably know, is one of the foremost London critics. When he wrote The Green Goddess he took the manuscript to his friend, George Bernard Shaw. Archer read the play to Shaw, who said: "That is the most perfect motion picture plot I ever heard." Well he might, for The Green Goddess has been done before in a hundred and one different variations — but never so well. Here you have three English prisoners in the hands of the Rajah of Rukh, a potentate who rules over a tiny mountain kingdom in the Himalayas. One of the prisoners is a woman, attractive, of course ; another is her husband and the third is the man she loves. The fate of the man hangs upon what she will say in reply to the rajah's