Screenland (Apr-Sep 1924)

The Silent V>rama GLBrief Reviews of Current Screenplays OlEvery picture of importance will be reviewed here, and the reviews reprinted for three consecutive months to enable our readers to use this guide as a directory in selecting their month's entertainment. "THE SILENT STRANGER" — F. B. 0. Fred Thomson and his white charger, Silver King, again — this time in a western mystery play based on "mail" and a female. Thomson is introduced as a deaf mute bronco buster, shell shocked in the war, but he turns up in the final reel as a Secret Service man assigned to round up a gang of mail bandits. What? Sure he gets them, and he wins the gel, too. It's Hazel Keener. Lots of excitement, some excellent "horse play" and some of the toughest looking hombres this side of the Rio Grande. Just a good, old-fashioned Western. "EXCITEMENT" — Universal. Story of a girl with an insatiable capacity for excitement who suddenly finds herself with more than she can handle. An incredible plot and a running fire of smart aleck sub-titles that fairly reek of cheap wit make this film just an hour of boredom. Laura La Plante, though, is a charming bit of femininity and tends to relieve some of the monotony which must be charged to Robert Hill, the director. An alsoran that should have been scratched before it started. "A GIRL OF THE LIMBERLOST"— F. B. 0. Gene Stratton-Porter's best comes out in this extremely interesting drama of a four-cornered puppy love. She proves that adolescence is sometimes made of sterner stuff than nefarious necking and the allied arts. With Gloria Grey, Gertrude Olmsted, Raymond McKee and Cullen Landis in the important roles, this film is exceptionally well enacted and should offer you as pleasant a seventy minute entertainment as you are likely to find in your town. A picture play for the family — it's wholesome. "THE STORM DAUGHTER" — Universal. Priscilla Dean in a tempestuous thriller of the briny in which George Archainbaud evinces a peculiar adaptability as a director of sea stories. Tense, gripping, thrilling, teeming with suspense, this attraction ranks with the best, that have come from the Universal studios. Thomas By Martin B. Dickstein Santschi is magnificent in the role of a brutal sea captain whose regeneration forms the basis of the story. Superbly staged. Enough excitement to last you all summer. 'GAMBLING WIVES" — Arrow. Another one' of those screen sermons with the moral, The Wages of Indifferent Matrimony is Divorce. Naughty papa forsakes mama and the baby and gads about with the other woman until friend wife gets the bright idea to win her husband back by making him jealous. Recognize the formula, don't you? Very trite and as dull as it is stereotyped. Marjorie Daw, Lee Moran and Betty Francisco in the cast. Old stuff done in the same old way. 'THE MORAL SINNER' ' — Paramount. Don't be misled by the title. No tinseled cabaret scenes, no naughty swimming pool shots in silhouette, no scofflaw's orgies — no nothing, in fact. Just Mr. Ralph Ince's conception of Leah Kleschna, with Dorthy Dalton in the title role. Leah, you know, is a bobbed haired bandit who gives up the delicate art of safe cracking when she loses her heart to a perfect sheik of a sleuth who is assigned to run her down. Intolerably slow moving crook meller about as exciting as a picturization of Hearts and Flowers. Something you can pass up. "FORTY HORSE HAWKINS" — Universal. Hoot Gibson has a trunkful of trophies for bronco busting, roping steers and rodeoing in general, but here we see him as a jitney driver, bell hop, hotel clerk, stage hand, ham actor and in a hundred other capacities from waiter in a half-way house to taxi driver in New York. Talk about versatility. Sedgwick has made a picture that bristles with action, one that'll chuck you a chuckle a minute. A bit far fetched but a good comedy for all o' that. "NELLIE, THE BEAUTIFUL CLOAK MODEL — Goldwyn Cosmopolitan. Not a satirical burlesque of the famous Owen Davis play, but straight, honest-to-goodness mellerdrammer that makes no pretense of being anything else. Enough hokum to make East Lynne look like a Theater Guild pet, but you'll like it because it's undiluted and uncamouflaged. Everybody enjoys a good, old-fashioned melodrama and the producers ought to give us more of them. Nellie is as good as a paper covered copy of Dead Eye Dick in the hayloft. It's a treat. "THE WOLF MAN" — Fox. Short but exciting bit of screening with a perfect wow of a fight in which John Gilbert rocks 'em and socks 'em like a champion. Lively, pulsating, full of action, this film has much ado about a young fellow who couldn't quaff a snifter without offering to fight anybody and everybody in sight. And he quaffs lots of them. Hardly nice entertainment for the more staid members of the community, but great stuff for the young bloods. "THE BELOVED VAGABOND"— F. B. 0. A poor interpretation of William J. Locke's novel, so atrociously miscast and amateurish in its presentation that it seems hardly worthy of a serious criticism. Carlyle Blackwell is sponsor for the film, supervised its production, stars in a dual role and generally monopolizes everything in sight. He looks like a post graduate student in the school of the tragedy. A banal bit of filming not worth a walk around the block. "RIDERS UP" — Universal. An interesting though a bit vulgarly interpreted story of the race track in which there are several vivid glimpses of blanket finishes at the Tia Juana track across the border. Creighton Hale and George Cooper are corking as a pair of nifty touts who are not nearly as bad as their checked suits would paint them. There is rather an abrupt ending which leave the spectators dangling on the end of a thread of circumstances which might have been terminated to better advantage. Keep the youngsters away — they'll learn too much about books and bookmakers. 6