Screenland (Apr-Sep 1924)

SCREENPLAYS By Delight E vans T J/w NjHE SEA . HAWK should have made me feel just like a kiddie again. It should have taken me back, back to those dear old days when I held a book about pirates before my bulging eyes and had bad dreams later on. It should have. It made the most critical "film man" of my limited acquaintance feel that way. "Why," he shouted in ringing tones which could have been heard all over the Algonquin if anyone had been listening, "Why, I tell you, my dear girl, that picture has given me a new lease on life. It's made me a boy again. It's made me feel that there is still some poetry and romance in this sordid world of that all that men have done/ for this infant art and — " modestly — "even the little that I have done, has not been in vain." It was all very beautiful. The film man almost believed it himself. Unfortunately, it failed to register with me. I remembered that he was remotely, oh, very remotely, connected with a certain film company not a thousand miles away from the estimable organization which made the motion drama in question — and preserved my firstnight impression of The Sea Hawk. It is "The love story of a mighty pirate chieftain of the seas," by Sabatini, with Milton Sills, Enid Bennett, Wallace Beery, Lloyd Hughes, and thousands of people— .the pretty programs said so. They built the carpenters, not the cast — four sixteenth-century ships, each with fifty cannons, one hundred to four hundred and fifty sailors, fighting men and galley slaves, at a cost of $275,000. There were 3,310 performers, including cameliers, nubians and harem women. The cameliers were especially striking. In fact, so far as I am concerned, the only thing The Sea Hawk lacks is — well, we'll call it life. In their praiseworthy effort to be just awfully redblooded, virile and piratical, a group of Hollywood's best people got together, narrowed .their eyes, clenched their fists, and pitched right in among all the cameliers, nubians and harem women. Everybody present succeeded in remaining a perfect little 'lady or gentleman. Frank Lloyd is one of the more intelligent and painstaking directors. The Sea Hawk simply yelled for a gay and reckless guide. One feels that Mr. Lloyd looked the facts squarely in the face and muttered, "This must be red-blooded — and then rushed out and hired Milton Sills and Enid Bennett for the leads. Now, I ask you! Mr. Sills is an excellent actor who used to be a college professor. . Neither qualification is particuarly apropos. He works hard; he looks grand; he just isn't my idea of a pirate, that's all. I never read The Sea Hawk, so I. don't know if the heroine, on paper, was such a sap as the scenario makes her out to be. As she appears on the screen, Rosamund Godolphin is the original clinging vine — one of those wideeyed ones who is always saying, "Don't dare touch me," whenever things are beginning to show signs of life. Enid Bennett makes her more so, if you trail me. For this prize heroine who doesn't know her own mind, if any, Milton Sills becomes the terror of the Spanish Main, donning a variety of peculiar helmets and Algerian kimonos. The costumers must have been cleaned out for this picture. All this sort of thing ought to be hot stuff; and while Lloyd and his aides doubtless did all they could, and turned out a costly and impressive picture, they might have made a great one. Even Wallace Beery, the silent drama's premier rough-neck, acts a bit, embarrassed and refined. His responsibilities as the life of a polite party <\Bcily Compson and Percy Marmont in The Enemy Sex. C[Enid Bennett and Milton Sills in The Sea Hawk. -50