We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
•I The PICTURE of the Month
*fl HIS page is for the great American non-playgoer ; for the man and the woman who, after seeing a few unfortunately selected movies, have relegated all of them to a limbo below the level of their tastes.
Oliver
—Associated Yirst National
M
OVIE fans with tastes jaded by the rich spice of trip-hammer drama and pictorial novelty may not enthuse at the tranquil flow of the master-novelist's mirrored story. But the great American non-playgoer, who spends most of his evenings under the library lamp, will not regret the sacrifice of one of them by visiting a picture theatre. Oliver Twist is one of the few screen offerings without the prevailing movie "twist."
That musty atmosphere of wood-cut illustrations and of mildewed volumes so dear to Dickens' lovers is recorded faithfully. But in reincarnating the story there comes a Jackie Coogan in a juvenile costume of that period when youths addressed their elders as "sir." And it is as disappointing to Coogan lovers as conscientious treatment
of the story is pleasing to Dickens' lovers. It removes the genius of this child-actor from his charming babyhood.
Almost every boy or girl eight years old can tell you that Jackie is a screen comedian. Thus it is surprising that he has been deprived of chance to exert his greatest appeal by the variety of screenable humor in Oliver Twist. A "touched-up" screen version would have mutilated Dickens but it would have improved Coogan.
For it is in his merrier moods that Jackie attracts children. And the children are entitled to a measure of consideration. Sex drama, spectacles and sophisticated farce is beyond them. Jackie is rightfully theirs and the younger ones, to whom sub-titles are but annoying interruptions, want that tattered, mischievous waif in a ragged cap to play to them as well as to the grown-ups.
35