The Billboard 1924-01-05: Vol 36 Iss 1 (1924-01-05)

eae 2 OS JANUARY 5, 1924 The Billboard oS). 59 REVIEWS By SHUMLIN “FLAMING PASSION” or “LUCRETIA LOMBARD” A Warner Bros.’ Picture A conventional love triangle, reversed to two ep and a man, with a raging forest fire ia flood to wind up the plot, is the story ntained in this picture, whieh is colored the pastels of the box-office. It means # smashing bit, nor can it d that the constricted dramatic tastes of the great and glorious movie public will be quenched even by the conventionality of the story. It is a picture that will please to a moderate extent, and that is saying plenty for it. mt with the ublie At the Strand Theater, where it was reviewed, the title ‘‘Lucretia Lombard’ was used, but the other and more ‘attractive’ name, “Flaming Passion”, will enhance it elsewhere. Is it necessary to state that the picture holds nothing to fit the glaring, burning let the echoes answer ‘“‘No.”” The mere fact that there is g fire and a love story 4 itie? is a weak excuse for such a name as ‘‘Flamng Passion". Monte Blue, Irene Rich, Norma Shearer, Alec I. Francis, Mare MeDermott and John Roche are the featured players. Blue gives a most convincing performance, and Miss Rich is her epstomary appeacing self, albeit @ trifle stouter then in her earller sereen days—which I!s every woman's privilege. Norma Shearer is really exeellent in a_ slightly distasteful role that of a spoiled, selfish, minutely snobbish young girl. A word or two should he sald against Mare McDermott lest his ten vent’-thirt’ performance go by unnoticed, In a part holding opportunities for solid character portrayal he is as lacking in authenticity and neffective as a ten-cent-store copy of a Gainsborough painting. Mr. McDermott's screen technique {is am anachronism; he beugs beck in the days of Broncho Billy. get on with the synopsis “Flaming Pas sion’ tells the stery of a young man in love with one woman, but caught in the web of another, whom he marries in an unexpected moment 'n order to please his dying father. Ile {ts rescued from this undesired marriage, however, when his bride is killed on the very ngbt of his wedding day. Monte Blue plays the young man, Stephen Winship, district attorney of a New England «ty. Norma Shearer plays Mary Warren, the led darling of bis father, who is ber irdiam. Mary or Mimi, a pet name for her, bas always loved Stephen, and one night, under the spell of a summer moon, he kisses her and finds himself formally engaged to marry wr Then he meets Lucretia Lombard, who has lived across the street from him for only « few months with a malevolent, invalid hushand. The husband dies suddenly from an overdose of sleeping powders, which he tricked ! wife into giving him, and she and Winrlip, at thelr first meeting, feel that Fate ! mude them for one another. The Winships eo to the mountain summer home of Mimi, who tes Mes. Lombard along. Stephen and Lucretia Lombard become more deeply in love and he determines to tell Mim! that he does het want to marry her. That night, however, Stephen sees Lucretia sitting with a friendly arm around his younger brother and suspects of falsity. When she leaves for the city with the younger brother that nicht to help hm get out of a mess, Stephen, unaware of r motive, feels she has betrayed him. Before Luoeretia returns the next day Stephen's ather is seriously wounded by an accidental t Feeling that he is going to die, the nded man asks hig son to marry Mimi right n and there. As the father is a minister, erforms the ceremony. Then Lucretia reand when she tells Stephen why she it away with his brother he Is shocked at mistake he made, and, unable to restrain elf, embraces her. His bride of but a w minutes sees the embrace. Lucretia and mi stay at the house alone, while the rest the family and servants take the wounded ther to the city to be treated. That night a forest fire occurs. The huntIge flame, and Loeretila and Miml from the hand in hand, the latter's forgotten in the sudden danger. effort to escape the flames !s made more ng by the wolves, bears and other forest tures also running before the fire, The ‘vo Women reach a railroad trestie and fling emeelves down upon i[t, thinking they have ‘ped the flames. But the river beneath, vollen by a broken dam, sweeps the strueaway and they are carried along by the t currents, Stephen arrives on the scene, tned by telephone of the fire, and sees them ed away by the He plonges in takes tire igonicm flood * d carries Mimi to the bank and then Lucretia. “oi dies in his arms, telling him that it the best way out, as he loves Lucretia Direction by Jack Conway. Produced by eae D buted Varner Brothers “AFTER THE BALL” A Theater Owners’ Distributing Corp. Picture At last, and alas! here is the first release of the Theater Owners’ Distributing Corporation, long promised and long «waited. At last, because it marks the actual inauguration of a company which promises to sell exhibitors pictures at fair And alas! because “After the Ball” is not a very great picture. To give the T. 0. D. C. its dune, it must be recorded that it has accepted as fact the idea that the pictures exhibitors want are sobby, sentimental melodramas such as “‘The Midnight Alarm" os “On the Banks of the Wabash", and has tried to get a picture to fit this idea. The unfortunate part about it, however, is that “‘After the Ball” has so great an overabundance of slobbering sentimentality that it is to be feared that even the insatiable appetite for hokum of the masses will be slightly sickened by the overflow. prices. For one thing, “‘After the Ball’ is much too long. The story could be better told in five reels than Its present seven. For another thing, the subtitles are the rankest collection of drool. ing slush gathered in one film. The second of these bad features shonld be remedied first, for with subtitles minus the watery heart-bleed “‘After the Ball’ will be considerably more palatable, ever together In the cast are Gaston Glass, Miriam Cooper, Fdna Morphy and Robert Frazer of the glazed hair. They are all forced to concentrate upon the expression of a single emotion—sadness. Gaston Glass {is sad, the victim of his weak will and the carelessness of Fate, never withont a bruised and broken heart excepting In the first two hundred feet and the last fifty feet of film. Miriam Cooper is sad, making endless sacrifices, herdly ever given the opportunity to smile. So ix Miss Murphy sad, poor thing. and Robert F-azer. Oh, it’s a sad story, mates. It would be a real pleasure ff I could report to you that the story of ‘‘After the Ball’ is one of those simple plots with gobs of pathos and offsetting chunks of broad humor, plus a plentiful dash of excitement to season the whole. But, alas, not to mention alack, such is not the ease. Charles K. Harris, the writer of that famous ballad whose title is the title of the picture, has laboriously fabricated as messy a collection of anti-climactic situations as jit has been my bad rortune to gaze upon. It strikes me that he could have shown a scene of broken hearts after a ball without going to the painful lengths that he has, At any rate the story recites the long siece of misfortune and gloom that comes upon the wealthy Trevelyan family, father, daughter and son, because of the wildness of Arthur, the oatssowing son. Arthur has been threatened with expulsion from the family rooftree on innumerable occasions by his father becanse of his wild perties and other goings-on, but his sister, Lorraine, has always interceded for him. But when Arthur comes home one day bringing along a wife he married the previous night, a girl with whom he has been partying for some time, the elder Trevelyan sends him out in the cold world, no more to be called son. Arthur and his wife, who Is quite a nice, home-loving girl, go to New York, leaving Los Angeles, their home, and there Arthur makes a hard fight to keep decent, but the gambling tables get all his money. One night he walks into a park and fs mixed up in a row between two thieves fighting over some stolen Jewels. One of them takes Arthur's clothing and forces Arthur to don his. When this one is killed a cop arrests Arthur and he is sent to prison accused of having murdered himself. Arthur's wife could have identified him, but, providentially for the rest of the story, she was injured by a motorcar while on the way to see the body of the man alleged to be her hnaband, and by the time she gets out of the hospital, where, by the way, gives birth to a baby, she fs foreed to accept as a fact the repert of his death. Arthur prison for five years, but finally escapes with the aid of the other of the she stays In crooks of the park scene. who recognizes <Arthur, but is not recognized by him. The two reach Los Angeles by freight car, and Arthur accosts his sister on the balcony of a ballroom. Ilia sister’s flance sees her kiss Arthur, who Is unknown to him, and gets sore when she refuses to explain the incident. She breaks off the en gagement, Then Arthur goes to visit his sister In her home—or, rather, their home—and gets into a fight with his ex-prison mate, who follows him. Arthur shoots the fellow and is arrested, but freed upon bis sister's testifying that he was a stranger and had defended ber from assault. The whole meses i« cleared up, however, just as Arthur is being taken back East to face the charge of breaking prison, when the dying con viet makes o confession that Arthur ts fnnocent of the charges azainst him. A-thur finds his wife and baby, his father takes him to his bosom, and his sister patches up her romance Direction by Dallas Fitzgerald. Produced by Pictures Iistributed by Theater Owners’ Distributing Corporation thru the Anderson Picture Corporation and the Film Booking Ofce f America. \ Neneo “BIG BROTHER” A Paramount Picture Unquestionably this picture is the best thing shown on Broadway for the past few months. “Big Brother’ is the nearest approach to “The Miracle Man" since that picture was produced. Let me tell you that I, whose WORK it is to review pictures, am going t see ‘‘Big Brother” again, for my own enjoyment. Allan Dwan, who directed it, has never done anything better. He proves that he doesn't require massive settings to put a picture over. And Tom Moore, who is starred! You'll rub your eres at his acting. Raymond Hatton, one of the best character actors in the movie world, does a great bit as a degenerate gangster. a cocaine fiend. And there is little kid—just a handful of personality by the name of Mickey Rennett—who is positively amazing. This is seme picture, and you can boost it up to the skies and know that when your patrons see it they will laugh and cry and hold their breath and leave your theater reluctantly—and maybe come back to see it again. “Big Brother’’ is a living story of the New York underworld; of the reformation of the hard-boiled leader of the Car Barn Gang thru his love for a little street urchin who looks up to him as the ultimate ideal of manhood. It has exciting moments, tender moments and moments of ianghter, Altogether, it is a genuine Winner. Tom Moore appears as Jimmy Donovan, than whom there is no tongher on the East Side, the “ten-minute egg’ who runs the Car Barn Gang with an fron hand. From a distance, Jimmy admires Kitty Costello, a girl of the neighborhood who is the Big Sister of the dirty, tenement-housed kids of the locale. When Cokey Joe Miller, a member of the gang, insults Kitty, Jimmy hears about it and makes Cokey Joe his enemy by the frightful cursing he bestows upon him in the gang’s clubhouse. Big Ben Murray, Jimmy's friend and right-hand man, is killed in a gang fight at the gang’s annual dance and *‘social’’, and before he dies makes Jimmy promise to take care of his kid brother, Midge, and bring him up straight. Jimmy takes little Midge, the toughest kid in the neighborhood, and cares for him like a blood-brother. He sees that the kid is determined to be like him when he grows up. so he makes up his mind to go straight and set a good example. Kitty Costello helps him with Midge. Then the Children's Welfare Society, hearing that Jimmy, a gangster, is bringing up an orphan, takes Midge away. In the children’s court Jimmy tells the judge, a well-meaning man, that he is going straicht for the kid and that Midge oughtn’t to be taken away from him. The judge asks Midge about Jimmy, and the kid, feeling that he must make the judge afraid of “his big brother’’, tells the judge what a tough guy Jimmy is. He tells him how Jimmy almost killed Cokey Joe when the latter tried to make him take some cocaine. The judge sends little Midge away to an orphan asylum, three officers being required *> haul the kicking, biting kid away from Jimm,. Donovan, seeing that the judge has taken away from him the only thing he loves, hurls defiance at him and the society he represents. “I've been a bad boy,”* he cries to the courtroom, ‘“‘but not bad enough. I've been going straight, but now watch me. I'll tear this town wide open now."’ He rushes to his gang’s headquarters and sends ont a summons for every member to attend, with all his artillery. But in the meantime Kitty Costello and Father Dan Marron, a Catholie priest, persuade the judge to tell Jimmy that if he shows that he is really going straight, be can have Midze back. So Jimmy drops the gang and goes back to work at the job Kitty got for him in the factory where she is employed as cashier. Cokey Joe Miller and several accomplices roh the pay-roll from Kitty one day when Jim fs away visiting Midge at *he orphanage, and when he returns the detectives arrest him. But he breaks away. finds out who stole the money. retrieves it and returns it, but is wounded severely by Cokey Joe and his gunmen. He gues to the hospital, but recovers when they bring little Midge back to him, and when Kitty tells him he must get well for her, be cause she loves him. ‘Big Brother’ is SOME picture—real boxoffice. Direction by Allan Dwan. Scenario by Panl Sloan from Rex Beach's novel. Distributed by Famous VWlayers-Lasky Corp. “BROADWAY BROKE” A Selznick Picture Rad direction and stupid production, combined with rotten scenario work, have ruined what should have been, by all the signs, a splendid picture. The original story, by Earl Derr Biggers, from which the picture was made, had all the ingredient gor a splendid photoplay of the gladness and ‘the sadness of theatrical life. Had the story ) on followed out witheut deviation. the picture would have been unusually geod, but the callous, inefficient hands which turned [t into a film have weakened its effectiveness by criminal padding resulting in a total lack of even the slightest subtlety. Had ‘Broadway ° “DON’T CALL IT LOVE” A Paramount Picture Given a half-way entertaining story, William DeMille can do more with it than any director on Famous Players-Lasky’s stat’ and without resorting to the extravagant padding methods of many of the directors, including even the illustrious Cecil DeMille. Willian has a remarkable creative faculty, a bread: of vision that every really great playwrie!t or. stage or picture director possesses. Given a stipulated situation, he can get over its meaning in much less footage and wit more clearness than any other director in my opinion. In ‘Don’t Call It Love”, story which tells the of a man's passing up the love of a sweet, gentle woman for the casual flame of a purely physical woman, only to go back to the first when the second’s flame dies out, DeMille has a plot which nine directors out of ten would have a cropper on. But he has filled it with a wealth of brilliant moments of acting, of character delineation and of subtle—but not too subtle—humor. It is really a most enjoyable picture, one that should please every andience except possibly those which thoucht ‘‘On the Banks of the Wabash” (my eternal example) a good picture. And for those audiences which purely emotional and spectacular, DeMille has provided sufficient attraction in the person of Nita Naldi, perhaps the most elusive quantity in the screen world today. Miss Naidi cannot be classified according to trpe. She is in a peculiar class all by herself. Im one scene you say: “I don’t like her. She looks so queer.”” And in the next, when she displays a sudden burst of brilliant acting or makes a strikingly erotic effect with her well-nizh weird gowns, you say: “She’s fine!’ And when you go out of the picture all you can say that seems to cover the point is “I saw Nita Naldi.”’ Others in the cast are Agnes Ayres, Jack Holt, Theodore Kosloff, Robert Edeson, Rod La Rocque and Julia Faye—surely an all-star east. Kosloff is quite good in a part that fits him—for a change—and La Rocque prove~ his right to the big feature parts he will shortly be seen in. The story: Alice Meldrum loves Richard Parrish, a well-todo young New York business man, He likes her, but tells her that he will never marry. She asks nothing of him but his affection, being willing to remain forever unmarried if only he will be friends with her. Parrish meets Rita Coventry, a famous opera singer, noted for her many love affairs as ~ uch as for her voice. She is exceedingly t mperamental, and believes that she sings best when in love, among other odd ideas. She is attracted by Parrish and tries out her vamping methods on him. He falls hard for her. Alice Meldrum goes to Cleveland to visit a sister, and Parrish forgets come enjoy the all about her, Coventry's magnetism having obtained so great a hold upon him. But Coventry has lost some of the first interest she had in him because he vamp, She goes with him to Atlantic City, but on the very day they arrive there she gets her eyes on a handsome, musically talented young piano tuner and forgets about Parrish. They go back to New York, taking the piano tuner, who is set on the road to success as a composer by Coventry, who tells Parrish that she doesn't care for him any longer. Parrish winces under the blow, bunt sees that Coventry treated him just as he treated was so easy to Alice. The affair awakens him to Alice's charms and he rushes to Cleveland to see her. But Alice has heard about Coventry and at first refuses to see him. When he finally faces her, however, her great love for him overcomes her hurt and she forgives him, upon which they get married. This brief synopsis does little justice to the picture, but there are many highly dramatic and comedy scenes in it that are skillfully worked up into a splendid climax. It is a good picture. Direction by W. DeMille, Distributed by Famous Players-Lasky Corporation. Broke’’ been kept down to five or six reels, had it stuck to the story, it would undoubtedly have been a fine picture. As it is, it is just a common feature, with all its expensive se and extra footage. To the exhibitor it is worth more than he would pay fer a regu! program picture. “Broadway Broke" is the story of a famous grown old and almoe-t p less, who regains her old-time courag i pride in herself, and wins back fame and snerity via the motion p Mary Carr plays actress, but is not particularly good in the part. Others in the cast Perey Marmount, Dore Gladys Leslie, Henrietta Crosman, Sally Crute and Mactyn Arbuckle, the lattes being on the sereen for only a few moments, being part of the atmosphere in the interpolated role of P. T. Barnum. The early part of the picture shows Mary Carr, as the actress, at the height of her fame an ir once actress, tures. the Davidson, iCantinned on rege "ae ' @ g i | ib