Wid's weekly (Jan-Oct 1925)

sPr*^_ _ Mike Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Mickey Neilan is once more in his element. This is a straight combination of broad comedy gags with a melodramatic finish that will bring cheers and ap¬ plause. It is very much along the formula lines of Mickey’s famous “Go Get It” of some years ago. Mickey takes those tried and true veterans, Char¬ lie Murray and Ford Sterling, through comedy se¬ quences that will make any gang roll in their seats with laughter. Hank Mann is used for some good laughs, and several kids help a lot in doing bits such as Mickey used Wesley Barry for in the early days of that freckle-faced kid’s career. Mickey introduces in this a new personality in Sally O’Neil, and that sassy' little lady registers in a manner that promises interesting developments. After playing along for several reels in a broad comedy vein, Mickey delivers a thrill that has a good kick when he lets a caboose carrying the kids do a runaway while the hero and the comics pull a spec¬ tacular rescue by means of a steam shovel and engine which pursue the flying runaway car. Later on Mickey has a fleet of aeroplanes chase and capture a gang of train robbers, and it is this aeroplane action which has the broad melodramatic significance that will pull spon¬ taneous applause from the kids in any audience and possibly from some of the grownups. “Mike” is sure fire. It is great entertainment and makes no pretense of being anything else. Your gang will love it. DIRECTOR . Marshall Neilan AUTHOR . Marshall Neilan CAMERAMAN . Dane Kesson WHOOZINIT . Sally O’Neil, Ford Sterling, Charlie Murray, Wm. Haines, Ned Sparks, Hank Mann, Frankie Darro, Junior Coghlan, Muriel Frances Dana, Sam DeGrasse, Wilfred Lucas, James Quinn. Friendly Enemies Belasco Prod.-Prods. Dist. Corp. Yell loud about Weber and Fields. They are funny and folks who come to see them will probably go home feeling that they have been fairly well enter¬ tained. With some audiences this may register as a pretty good picture. I was pretty sore about it personally because it could have been a marvelous picture and it isn’t. Somehow those associated with this became ob¬ sessed with the idea that the play was more important than Weber and Fields. That’s silly. Even in the advertising matter presented, the title is given more prominence than the two stars and you should cer¬ tainly reverse that in all of the advertising which you do. This was a hurrah story about the war with some broad melodrama and a few good moments of pathos as shown in the original play. The melodrama as screened is pure hokum and the pathetic incidents miss entirely except for some moments that Lew Fields manages to put over in spite of handicaps. If you will concentrate all of your advertising upon Weber and Fields, you will undoubtedly be able to do some business with this and send your gang home fairly well satisfied. Don’t rave about the pic¬ ture itself because it is not what it should have been Talk entirely about the famous comedy team, whose name is a household word throughout this country. DIRECTOR . George Melford AUTHORS . . . From the stage play by Samuel Shipman and Aaron Hoffman. ADAPTOR . Alfred Cohn CAMERAMAN . Charles Clark WHOOZINIT . Lew Fields, Joe Weber, Eugenie Besserer, Virginia Brown Faire, Jack Mulhall, Stuart Holmes, Lucille Lee Stewart, Nora Hay¬ den, Jules Hanft, Fred A. Kelsey, Johnnie Fox, Ed Porter. Vll Show You the Town Universal 1 ’ve never read this book, but a lot of people have told me that it was a very good yarn. After seeing the picture I cannot figure what was great about the book, because on the screen they have delivered a straight string of rather broad comedy gags with some of them leaning very decidedly towards the slapstick classification, all working up to a grand chase at the finish. There are some good laugh gags and from a straight entertainment viewpoint this might be figured as earning enough laughs to justify it, but through the early sequences it seemed to me that the introductions were decidedly laborious and in view of the fact that it became broad farce later on, I think they took entirely too much time in attempting to jfiant certain charac¬ ters in the early reels. Reginald Denny has developed quite a following and for that reason I would figure this capable of get¬ ting pretty good money. I do not believe that it is as good as “Sporting Youth,” “Oh Doctor” or “The Fast Worker,” but in any event it is a broad comedy that has enough laugh values to please a large percentage of your fans and you will have no complaint unless it might be from folks who have read the book and feel that the picture as screened fails to deliver what they saw in the book. DIRECTOR . Harry Pollard AUTHOR. . .Elmer Davis’ novel adapted by Raymond Schrock. CAMERAMAN . Charles Stumar WHOOZINIT. Reginald Denny, Margaret Livingston, Marion Nixon, Edward Kimball, Lilyan Tashman, Hayden Stevenson, Neely Edwards, Wm. A. Carroll, Martha Mattox, Helen Green, Lionel Braham, Cissy Fitzgerald.