Wid's weekly (Mar-Dec 1924)

SATURDAY NOVEMBER 22, 1924 Great Cast In Complicated Farce That Earns Lots Of Laughs . Reckless Romance Christie-Prods. Dist, Corp. Length 5 Reels DIRECTOR . Scott Sidney AUTHOR . F. McGrew Willis’ adaptation and play, “What’s Your Wife Doing?” CAMERAMEN . Gus Peterson and Paul Garnett GET ’EM IN . By yelling about this cast and selling it as a farce full of laughs you should do splendid business. PLEASE ’EM . There is no sense to the darned thing because it is just plain farce hokum, but it has a lot of real people in it and they earn plenty of laughs. WHOOZINIT . T. Roy Barnes, Harry Myers, Sylvia Breamer, Wanda Hawley, Tully Marshall, Jack Duffy, Lincoln Plummer, Morgan Wallace and George French. STORY VALUES . This was a straight farce centered around an old granddad’s objection to the sort of wife his favorite had married with the complications piling thick and fast until granddad discovered that the wife was really a regular fellow. TREATMENT . They kept this thing moving and the excellent cast played up to one another so that the laughs were plentiful. CHARACTERIZATIONS . I don’t believe that we have ever had as good a cast as this in a farce. They all worked hard and delivered. ARTISTIC VALUES . No strenuous effort was made to secure what are called artistic light¬ ings, but they did present a background of con¬ siderable size. Any time you can hang out an ad containing a cast like this presents, with the promise that the of¬ fering is built entirely for laughing purposes, you surely should be able to collect a real gang. This is not the gi’eatest comedy ever made, but it certainly will prove excellent entertainment for nearly any gang, no matter whether they prefer slapstick or subtle comedy. Basically this is a farce and the action rests upon a constant repetition of the situation where Harry Myers is trying to get himself out of a tangle caused by his belief that his grandfather will thoroughly dis¬ approve of his wife. You are not supposed to take all the wild action seriously, hut the gang keep it racing along at a speed that will keep any audience either chuckling or laughing right out loud. T. Roy Barnes, Harry Myers, Sylvia Breamer and Wanda Hawley are the quartette of young people who continually get tangled up in their love affairs. Harry Myers has a terrific time trying to frame a situation whereby he will catch his friend, Tom Barnes, and his wife, Wanda Hawley, together in a compromising position. Many elaborate preparations are made, but whenever Harry busts into the situation with his granddad, Jack Duffy, in tow, someone else horns in and busts up the frameup, so that instead of Myers and Duffy finding Miss Hawley with Barnes, they al¬ ways find someone else. Jack Duffy is the old granddad and he certainly has rough going all the way through this. He does enough falls to put him in the hospital for eight years, except that Jack happens to know how to do this stuff without breaking his neck. Tully Marshall, Lincoln Plummer, Morgan Wal¬ lace and George French have the job of keeping the complications moving so that Myers and Barnes are unable to put over their frameup. Of course Tully Marshall and the rest of these boys do not know that they are busting up the frameups and the thing really carries some elements of possibility in the manner in which it is worked out. For farce construction this is one of the best films that we have had in a long time because the complications come thick and fast and with a certain amount of reasonable possibility. You may not realize just how well the picturegoing public knows the work of the Christie boys. For a good many years now, the Christie studios have been turning out laugh-getting films without resort to nearly so much smut and slapstick as the other comedy makers use as a rule. These Christie comedies have been working in the best theaters all over the country. T believe that the name, “Christie,” on a comedy to¬ day has a very definite box office value and I would particularly advise you in exploiting this farce to yell about the fact that it is a Christie production. You have a splendid cast to talk about here and in order to emphasize the importance of this cast, I would suggest that you go about it in this way: Within the last few months, each one of these players has appeared in your city, either in your theater or in the opposition house, in some important picture. I would suggest then that you build an ad along this line: “You remember T. Roy Barnes in ‘The Great White Way’? You remember Tully Marshall in ‘The Covered Wagon’? etc., etc., naming each member of the cast and a film in which they were featured in your city. At the tag end of this ad you can yell in big type about the fact that this farce brings all of these players together in a fast-moving complicated matrimonial mixup that will surely provide entertain¬ ment for even the worst grouch in town. There were many excellent gags in this, but one of the best laughs in the whole picture to me was the bit where T. Roy Barnes had to make good in a hurry on the statement that he had gone to a board of direc¬ tors’ meeting with the result that he grabbed all the waiters in a restaurant and planted them around a big table where lie proceeded to make a speech to them, indicating that he was actually attending the board of directors’ meeting.