Wid's weekly (1923)

Starts As Great Comedy — Plot Cripples It at End The Meanest Man in the World Principal — First National Length 7 Reels DIRECTOR . Eddie Cline AUTHOR . From the play by George M. Cohan and Augustin McHugh, adapted by Lenore Cof¬ fee and John Goodrich. CAMERAMEN . Arthur Martinelli and Harold Janes. GET ’EM IN . Trick title and cast have some good pulling power. PLEASE ’EM . First half is great, but it goes to pieces in last half. WHOOZINIT . Bert Lytell, Blanche Sweet, Bryant Washburn, Carl Stockdale, Bill Conklin, Ward Crane, Lincoln Stedman, Victor Potel and other players in good bits. SPECIAL APPEAL . There is excellent oppor¬ tunity for trick exploitation keyed on title. STORY VALUES . Preliminary structure develop¬ ment excellent and nicely padded with gags, but final plot mechanics very poor. TREATMENT . Director’s comedy touches and players put over first few reels beautifully — too much plot mechanics and faulty business notions ruined last of story. CHARACTERIZATIONS . Lytell and Miss Sweet did straight stuff, with Bryant Washburn, Lin¬ coln Stedman, Carl Stockdale, Bill Conklin, Vic¬ tor Potel and other good players registering character and comedy touches that made this great entertainment at times. ARTISTIC VALUES . Composition and lightings were not particularly distinctive, but photogra¬ phy and general handling were satisfactory. They got this away to a great start in the first reel and then for half an hour it was a continuous chuckle as Eddie Cline pulled one gag after another, making it bright, snappy comedy without leaning too far towards slapstick. About half way through this they started after the one situation of the plot and from that time on it did a terrible flop. It is unfortunate that this finishes off with such a slump, because up to the half-way mark it is a whizz. The chief thing that spoiled the last half of the film was the use of plot mechanics that could have been very easily switched to something that could have been registered successfully. From the time Lytell and Washburn began to aid Miss Sweet in promoting an oil well to defeat the willuns, the comedy gags were dropped and the enter¬ tainment value dropped with them. They took a lot of footage to register an unwieldy idea about rescuing from an auto wreck a guy who had a truck full of umbrellas which were afterwards sold when a rain storm came along, this occasion being used to start the promotion of the oil well. It was not at all clear as to why the young promoters had to wait for a rain storm to start addressing a crowd, talking about the oil well, because it would have been much easier to have gotten a crowd ready to listen in better humor if they had picked out a nice, bright, sunny day for it. The story of the willuns’ trickery would surely have been just as effective in the sunshine as in the rain. Following the umbrella footage, they leaned very heavily on a situation which provided the willun an opportunity to foreclose a $5000 mortgage on a farm where the promoters had swung a $40,000 oil well. No explanation was given for the ridiculous state of af¬ fairs which permitted them to put a $40,000 oil well on the property without taking up the $5000 mort¬ gage. Certainly investors in the $40,000 experimental well would have insisted upon there being an addi¬ tional $5000 raised to protect them against foreclosure. As it is played, they wait until the oil, by a miracle, comes in before the well is finished in order that the hundreds of stockholders assembled should come to. Then one of them puts up the $5000 needed to thwart the willuns. These two cumbersome and very faulty story me¬ chanics spoiled the last part of the film because they Avere given too much prominence, with the comedy ele¬ ment omitted. In the first few reels we had a lot of very good laughs. To be true, there was a great deal of hokum, but just the same it was funny. Eddie even got away with the gag about the lady saying that she knew Mr. Ford was in the office because she saAv his car out¬ side. If 99 per cent of your audience has had that pulled on them a good many times it will still he good for a sure-fire laugh. It was a bit odd to see Bryant Washburn doing a second lead in this, because the title role is exactly the sort of thing which he really made famous in films. As the action ran, Bryant managed to hold up his part in a way that it ranked with the lead. Carl Stockdale did a very good crabby old miser character, with Bill Conklin and Ward Crane good hard-boiled financial men. Lincoln Stedman got more value out of the office boy stuff than Victor Potel was able to get from the grocery store sequences because the grocery store sequences were held down by the burden of the plot action.