The Billboard 1924-11-22: Vol 36 Iss 47 (1924-11-22)

NOVEMBER 22, 1924 REVIEWS By SHUMLIN “THE GREATEST LOVE OF ALL” Beban re yritten, directed by and rene “Boban, the actor of italian character roles, The Greatest Low of AU is a mighty fine motion icture for the box-office. It is packed with sentimentality and comedy; it has ‘that very important thing called heart-interest Another name for heart-interest is hokum, and The Greatest Love of All— which means the love of a man for his mother—is hokum enough to satisfy the most sentiment-loving audience. Its plot may be called implausible, but not enough to make itself felt. At the Rivoli Theater, where the picture was reviewed, it is shown both on screen and stage, Beban and a company of 24 actors acting out one of the important scenes of the play right on the stage, the picture leaving off as the stage act begins, and taking up again as it ends. This reviewer, however, saw it at one of the performances in which the picture is run straight thru, without the staze act, and is of the opinion that, when Beban decides to release it generally, it will be a good attraction for any picture theater. Beban has already played it in many of the en fing theaters in the important cities, and any house big enough to use it with the star and supporting company should not pass it up now. It is a good bet. There are few character actors in pictures who get under your skin so quickly and surely as Beban. In this picture he plays an Italian ice and coal dealer of New York's Little Italy, who brings his little old mother over from the old country and fixes her up as the mistress of his two-room castle which adjoins his wood and ice cellar. Joe, the iceman, is enamored of Trina, the daughter of the shoemaker in the adjoining cellar, but most of his affections are for his old mother. He teils her that he is saving to buy a little home in the country for her, and she conspires with Trina to earn some money secretly to surprise him with, Having by accident become acquainted with the wife of the city’s district attorney, Godfrey Kelland, the old lady gets Mrs. Kelland to give her the weekly washing. One day, when returning the laundered linen, Joe’s mother comes into Mrs. Kelland’s boudoir when that lady is taking off her jewels, and after she has gone Mrs. Kelland discovers her diamond bracelet is missing. She gets in touch with her husband, who sends a detective to Joe's domicile. The detective enters the place just in time to see the old lady picking the miss bracelet out of the clothesbasket an wondering how it got there. He arrests her and takes her to jail. Joe returns and is utterly devastated to find what has happened. He rushes off to the agglice Station, but finds that he can do nothing to get the poor old lady out. Her case comes to trial and Kelland himself handies the prosecution, succeeding in getting a verdict of guilty and having her sentenced to three years in the nitentiary. Poor Joe goes half crazy, but can do hothing, while Trina goes to Mrs. Kelland and asks her to get the old lady free. While talking together they notice Mrs. Kelland’s small daughter mischievously taking a piece of jewelry off the dressing table and dropping it into the basket where the soiled linen is kept, and the mystery of the bracelet is self-explaine The two women rush off to find Kelland at the golf club, where he has cone for a game. In the meantime Joe has been persuaded by two crooks, who are out to kill Kelland, to avenge himself, shey take him out te the golt course and five him a golf ball loaded with explosive and he puts it in the place of one Kelland has just driven near the roadside. As Kelland is about to drive, however, he Sees Trina approach, and throws himself upon the ball, taking the blow of the descending stick upon his head. He is carried to the clubhouse and revived, to find everything smoothed out. In the supporting cast are Mary Skurkoy, who makes a very pretty Trina; Marie di Benedetta, who plays Joe's mother; Wanda Lyon, J. W. Johnston, O. Zangrilll, Nettie Belle Darby, John K. Newman and others. “THE BELOVED BRUTE” Vitagraph Oh, man! what a_ rip-snorting, hichPowered knockout of a motion picture t The Beloved Brute is! And what a Uy burning new star in the screen arm: ment it discloses in the person of tor McLaglen! I have to pinch my“it to make sure I'm not dreaming that ‘his photoplay ts a Vitagraph production. Only a few weeks ago it was The Clean Heart, a feature of the first water, a gem of the purest ray—and now The Beloved Brute, which, to my mind, sets a new Standard for Western pictures that will be re membered as a milestone on the adVeace of the art of the silent drama. Take off your hats to Vitagraph; it is making top-notch pictures. The cast of players is headed by Marguerite De La Motte, the previously mentioned McLaglen, William Russell, Mary Alden, Stuart Holmes, D. D. McLean, br K The Billboard LCKET 48 N.ASHLAND AVE, CHICAGO. in Bo) 8 Tice de) 4s) 3 o) 9 3 coy TI DIAGRAM 40 ADVANCE SALE RACKS © Frank Brownlee, Wilfrid North, Ernie Adams, William Moran, George Ingleton and Jess Herring. There isn’t a single derogatory word to be said about any of them, and nothing but the most boundless praise for McLaglen. If he doesn't become a star who will have the combined opularity of William S. Hart, Tom Mix, Milton Sills and the one-time famous Italian, Maciste, then I don’t know a diamond from a piece of glass. The Beloved Brute is from the story by Kenneth Perkins and has been directed by J. Stuart Blackton. It tells the story of two brothers, both great, strong men, six-footers, the sons of a preacher of the old West. One of them, the elder, Charles—played by McLaglen—is a Yichting brute, a fearless, reckless, wild, devil-may-care fellow whose specialty is breaking up saloons. He hasn't been home in 15 years and doesn't know his younger brother, David, who is just as big and strong, but has less of the Old Boy in his makeup. The father of these two feels the hand of death approaching and sends his younger son away to the ranch of a relative. He then sends for his other son and when he arrives prophesies that he will be humbled to the dust by his own brother. He declares that Charles is a “fighter without a soul.” Charles goes back to his haunts, but he’s never the same after that. He worries about his younger brother and about finding a soul for himself. A pretty young dancer in the town he stops off at implores him to get her out of the clutches of a villain known as China Jones, who runs a rotten dance hall, and Charles jumps at the chance. He mgkes known his intention of taking her away at night and when he enters the dance hall finds Jones and about 50 gangsters awaiting him. With his bare hands Charles sails In and makes mincemeat of the whole lot. He is the only actor I have ever seen who can defeat 30 or 40 opponents and make it seem plausible. Grabbing the girl, and taking with him a Woman called Augustina, another victim of Jones, Charles rides off for other parts. He buys an old circus wagon and starts a three-act show, touring the small towns. Augustina tells fortunes, Jacinta dances and he wrestles all comers. He gets to the town where his brother lives, and when he throws forth his challenge David comes up to try his hand. €harles knows who his opponent is, but David does not. David, played by William Russell, wins the match—the only fierht Charles ever lost. Broken by his defeat, Charles, in his jealousy, makes Jacinta leave him, tho she loves Lim. She gets a job as dancer at the local cafe and just before her performance David, who is enamoured of her, takes her away with him to his home in the hills. In the meantime Avugustina has shot China Jones, who has reappeared, and cast the blame on David. His enemies form a necktie party and rush after him. Charles appears on the scene and follows after. He comes up to the party just as they are about to hang David and announces that he is guilty of the murder. But the posse decides to lynch them both. Then Jacinta rushes back to town, grabs Augustina, drags her back to the sheriff and makes her confess and the lynching bee is interrupted. Charles and David are liberated and Jacinta rushes into the arms of Charles. Jacinta tells him that he is a fighter with a soul. makes himself known to his brother and all ends charmingly, tho David regrets that Jacinta has not chosen him. The fights staged by McLaglen and the wrestling bout he has with Russell are great stuff. They will more than satisfy the most bloodthirsty audience. “HEARTS OF OAK” Fox An old-time melodrama modernized and given an extra solid punch by the use of a radio sequence, Hearts of Oak is a mighty good picture which should especially appeal to the masses. It igfa mixture of action and sentiment, ith the emphasis on the sentiment—a real, oldfashioned tear-jerker. Hobart Bosworth, Pauline Stark and Theodore Von Pitz are the featured members of the cast, with the principal role in the capable hands of Bosworth He plays a kind-hearted sea captain, past the meridian of life, who marries the young girl he had adopted when she was a child, and gives her up after several years have passed when he learns that she loves his other foster child, a young man for whom his wife should have waited. There are some fine scenes in the far North, where the broken-hearted captain takes his ship after leaving his wife, and where the boat is caught in the ice. A shipwreck in the early part of the picture and the final scenes, when the Then Charles dying captain, thousands of miles from home, hears his wife and child say goodby to him over the radio, are the other impressive parts of the picture. The early scenes of the picture take Place in a small New England seacoast town where lives the sea captain, Terry Donivan, and his family, old pare ents and Agnes, his beloved foster child. Two years before Donivan’s foster son had gone to sea, first telling Agnes of his love and telling her he would marry her when he returned. When two years dragged by without word of her lover, poor Agnes thought that he would never return and agreed to marry Terry out of gratitude and the desire to make him happy. The marriage takes place just as the long missing young man returns, and is rescued with his mates from his ship, which is dashed against the reef. The returned youth is heartbroken at the news of the marriage, but does his best not to let his benefactor notice his disappointment. Several years pass, and a baby comes to make the captain's heart happy. Then he begins to see that his wife loves the other man and realizes that he himself is too old for her. He forces the young man to go to his wife and himself leaves on a long trip into the Arctic. His ship is caught in the ice, and as months pass by the food supplies run out and his men die off one by one. Finally he and another man are the only ones left alive and they are rescued in a dying condition b¥ a government ship aboard which is his foster son, looking for him. He cries out that he only wants to hear his wife and child say good-by to him, and connections are made by wireless, so that this wish is fulfilled and he dies with his child’s voice in his ears. John Ford directed the production, which is made and released by Fox Film Corporation. “WHITE MAN” ———. Schulberg-Preferred Until the very last reel, White Man is pretty much of a bore. The greater portion of its footage is a prolonged and vain effort to make interesting and im rtant what is decidedly ordinary and ull, These Preferred pictures are chiefly distinguished by the artificiality which results from the striving to make them @ppear much more important than they are. For the most part they are just the usual type of independent productions built to answer what are supposed to be the requirements of the masses, and the additional false glitter with which they are invested by the producer is transparent tinsel, which in no way enhances their value as entertainment, tho it may increase their price. The best thing about White an is that Alice Joyce is in the cast. @She is still as lovely a woman as ever she was, altho the role she fills gives her no opportunity to display her ability as an actress. Kenneth Harlan and Walter Long are the only other important players in the cast. The three characters they represent, too, are the only ones of any moment in the picture ; all the other parts are small and mean very little in the story. The last reel, mentioned in the opening line of this review, concerns itself with the rescue in a South African jungle of the heroine, played by Miss Joyce, from the villainous arms of a fugitive from justice, played by Long. The rescuing is done by the hero, an aviator and American ace, played by Harlan, who for some reason has fled from civilization and buried himself in the same jungle. The rescue is made with the aid of an air lane, which crashes into the roof of the ut in which the heroine and villain are struggling. This is very much the same as the chief incident of The Broken Wing, a picture which Preferred released a number of months ago, and in which Harlan and Long also appeared. Miss Joyce plays the part of Lady Andrea Pellor, beautiful daughter of titled and aristocratic but penniless parents. They live in a South African city, and have arranged for Lady Andrea to marry a wealthy but repugnantly plebeian diamond-mine owner by the name of Hammer. One hour before the wedding is to take place Andrea flees out into the garden and down upon the nearby beach, just for one moment alone before she gives herself to be Hammer’s bride. There upon the beach she spies an airplane, and, influenced by a sudden emotion, rushes up to it and begs the begoggled aviator to take her up with him. At first he refuses, then grants her request. He takes her up into the air and heads the plane toward the jungle. Andrea becomes panicstricken and wants to return, but the aviator refuses. By the next morning the plane reaches the aviator’s destination, a native villa in the interior, in which the aviator considered a sort of master and deity. 53 Andrea demands that she be taken back home, but, as the profeller has been damaged, she is forced to remain there until a new one is brought back by a runner, which will take 16 days. She declares that she hates the aviator, who refuses to tell her his name, asking her to call him “White Man”, but when she falls sick after a few days and the white man nurses her back to health she realizes she loves him. When she gets well she returns to a policy of coolmess toward him.” Then another white man, called the river thief, who is an English opera singer and fugitive from tHe law, a degenerate sort of person, calls upon his neighbor, shoots him down and runs off with Andrea, taking her to his village. “White Man” regains consciousness, hops into his plane, the new propeller having arrived, shoots over to the river thief’s Village, flops on the roof and rescues the girl. He then returns her to her home, where she gives her fiance back his ring and gives her love to her “white man”, who proves to be none other than Robert Trevor, American aviator and bosom friend of her brother in the World War. White Man is third-rate stuff. It was directed by Gasnier, produced by B. P. Schulberg, and is released thru franchised State-right exchanges. “HE WHO GETS SLAPPED” “ea Metro-Goldwyn idering it solely as a motion picPng mm taking thought of the original play from which it has been adapted and he taking into consideration whether it could not have been tter produced, it is my opinion that He Who Gets Slapped is an entertaining photoplay, well acted and produced on a splendid’ seale, and with sufficient difference from the ordinary run of features to make it a fair box-office attraction. I do not think it will prove overly successful in the smaller cities and towns, altho the motive behind the method of the screen adaptation was to make it precisely that. Directed by Victor Seastrom, with a cast headed by such box-office names as Lon Chaney, John Gilbert, Norma Shearer, Mare McDermott, Tully Marshall and Ford Sterling, and with a rather sumptuous production, the picture will undoubtedly be sold as a big box-office attraction, but I am of the opinion that it will never be this. Altho the adaptation mercilessly slashes the original play, a tragedy by the Russian dramatist, Leonid Andreyev, no one understanding the needs of the screen will feel indignant about the slashing itself. But I, for one, being acquainted with the original play, consider that the manner of the slashing was illadvised, and. not only tends to kill off the very things that made the play remarkable, but considerably reduces the interest of the picture itself as a picture. For example: one of the most important characters and most interesting in the play was a woman lion ‘tamer, who was passionately in love with her animals. There is nothing of her in the picture; she has been killed off, as a character, altogether. Again, the heroine, Consuelo, is in the play a perfect innocent, looking at the world with the wondering, barely comprehending eyes of a child. In the picture this innocence, so important in the play, is not even present. “Norma Shearer brings nothing new to the role, and does not succeed in fulfilling any of its original requirements. She appears self-conscious and afraid of the part. Chaney gives a superfine performance in a role more difficult than any he has ever played. He achieves a combination of tragedy and humility that touches the heart. Tully Marshall, as an impoverished, degenerate nobleman, who is eager to sell his daughter in marriage in order to assure his own prosperity, is above criticism—as he always is. Chaney plays a disillusioned scientist whose wife and best friend have betrayed him. Throwing aside his old life, he joins a circus as a clown and becomes the star of the show. He is known as He Who Gets Slapped, thru the act he does, in which he attempts to address the audience seriously and is slapped by the other clowns in the troupe every time he opens his mouth to speak. Another member of the troupe is Consuelo, a pretty young bareback rider, who is in love with Bezano, who also does a riding act, and for whom “He” also conceives a deep affection. Consuelo’s father is a penniless, hy ritical nobleman, Count Mancini, and he introduces his daughter to no other than the man who betrayed “He”, with the purpose of selling her to him. In order to save Consuelo from being married to this villain, on the night the marriage is to take place, “He” enters the room in the Paris circus in which the Count and the false Baron are waiting, makes himself known to the Baron, then goes into an adjoining room, and, dragging a cage in which a fierce lion is caged to the door, opens the cage so that when the door is opened the lion will be free. He then returns to the room and locks the other door. In a_ struggle with the Count he is mortally wounded by the sword the Count carries in his walking stick. “He” sinks to the floor and watches the Count and Baron as they try to get out of the room. They open the door to the adjoining room and the lion springs at them and kills both, but is driven back into its cage by its keeper before it can devour “He”. my | strength and holding one hand over his bleeding breast, “He” staggers out into the arena, where (Continued on page 54)