Screen Opinions (1923-24)

130 SCREEN OPINIONS TELLS THE TRUTH pleasant subject, but because an excellent cast has been chosen to play it, and because artistic photography and settings have been added to other good features in the production, the result is satisfactory from the standpoint of entertainment. One rather stands aghast when the former wife of Dr. Fleming looms up after he has married her sister and a child is about to be born. The situation in which the sister believed to be dead has been confined in a sanitarium, is unusual but not improbable, and if the exhibitor knows his people well enough to be able to choose pictures they like, he will have no trouble in answering the question as to whether this is the one for him or not. It contains a great deal of human interest, and but for a slight jar now and then in the smoothness of the continuity it can be classed as a good production. Gladys Leslie and Norma Shearer are charming in the leading feminine roles, and Maurice Costello and Robert Elliott, and also Edna May Spooner, give C excellent performances. STORY OF THE PLAY Caleb Perkins, a farmer living in the Berkshire Hills with his wife and two daughters, caused Dora, the older of the two, to run away from home to escape marriage with a man of his choosing. Later a stranger comes to the hills, Dr. Howard Fleming, and Dolly, the younger, loves and marries him. It happens that he was the husband of her sister, whom he believes to have died while he was on a trip to Miami, the fact that she has been placed in a private sanitarium by a man with whom she was motoring when she was injured, having been kept a secret. When Fleming finally learns the truth, he sends for her and has her placed in an unused wing of the house, and Dora, wandering out of her room, comes face to face with her sister. Dolly decides that her duty is to go back home. But later fate takes a hand and Dora dies, and Dolly returns to Dr. Fleming with her child. PROGRAM COPY— “Man and Wife”— With an All-Star Cast What could a just woman do, discovering that unawares she had married her sister’s husband? This strange tale of two sisters of the Berkshire Hills will interest you. Two pretty screen stars appear in the film, Gladys Leslie and Norma Shearer. “CHILDREN OF JAZZ”— [Class A] 90% (Adapted from play, “Other Times’’) Story: — Jazz-Infected Girl Shown Folly of Ways by Forgotten Fiance VALUE _ CAST Photography — Very good — Dev Jennings. Richard Forestall Theodore Kosloff TYPE OF PICTURE^ — Spirited — Unusual. Ted Carter Recardo Cortez Moral Standard — Fair. Clyde Dunbar Robert Cain Babs Weston Eileen Percy Story — Very good — Comedy-melodrama — Lina Dunbar Irene Dalton Adults. John Weston Alec B. Francis Cast — Very good — All-Star — With Theodore Adam Forestall Frank Currier Kosloff, Recardo Cortez, Eileen Percy and Blivens Snitz Edwards Robert Cain. Deborah Lillian Drew Author — Very good — Harold Brighouse. 1 1 ■ . . Direction — Very good — Jerome Storm. August 1 to 15, 1923. Adaptation — Very good — Beulah Marie Dix. Technique — Very good. Spiritual Influence — Neutral. Producer — Paramount Footage — 6,000 ft. Distributor — Famous Players Our Opinion MORAL O’THE PICTURE — Beware of Jazzy Ideals — Tried Standards of Life Are Best. Well-Staged Production Lives Up to Significance of Title “Children of Jazz” lives every inch up to the significance of its title, and is full to the brim of interesting things. In presenting a jazzy production such as this is you are bound to have the majority of your patrons with you, although . there are those who will object to the picture on the strength of the heroine’s * trifling attitude toward men. Babs Weston, played charmingly by Eileen Percy, thinks no more of kissing a man or allowing him to embrace her, than she does of eating her breakfast; and the lesson handed her by her forgotten, first fiance, is staged in the lighter vein. This viewed from the angle of the box office is apt to be counted an asset rather than a fault, and it seems to us that the fairest way to judge “Children of Jazz” is on its face value — in other words, just for what it is, one of the peppiest, jazziest of moving pictures. It is extravagantly staged, and moves in one breath from modern to century old settings and costumes. A dash of the spectacular will be found in the foundering of an aero (Continued on next page) No Advertising Support Accepted!