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time recently, in a small West Virginia town. The print had made the rounds of fifty larger cities and towns and was butchered almost beyond recognition.
There ought to be a law against motion picture mayhem.
IN a month when there are so many excellent pictures that we are forced to extend the "Best Six" to ten, in justice to Will Rogers' opus, "A Texas Steer," it should be noted that only the exigencies of a printing plant operating schedule kept it from the list of the best new pictures viewed in the past four weeks.
The very fact that Rogers is in it is a guarantee of a picture on which it is safe to put the family money.
Will Rogers is not an actor. If he tried to act he would probably be terrible.
He plays himself with delightful effect and the captions are in his own uniquely expressed philosophy.
Will is no John Gilbert, no Douglas Fairbanks, nor could he play the suave and polished Menjou if his Oklahoma neck depended upon it.
He's himself. And he's always great company for an evening.
AS a matter of fact most of our picture stars play their own personalities over and over. In real life Doug is a genial jumping jack, Lon Chaney a morose idealist, John Gilbert a reckless romanticist, Gloria Swanson a child of fate, Adolphe Menjou a cultured and sophisticated gentleman. Milton Sills is an athletic college professor. Dick Barthelmess is half boy, half man, vainly seeking sympathy and understanding in a world he cannot quite comprehend.
Pola and Jetta Goudal live the temperamental qualities of their pictures. Mae Murray was born to dance. Reginald Denny is a handsome pugilistic champion. Some of the attributes the sport writers give Gene Tunney fit him perfectly.
Tom Mix has lived the life he portrays on the screen. Billy Dove and Corinne Griffith are beautiful and languid on and off the screen.
You cannot fool the camera. It gets behind the eyes of the actor.
I make no claim to psychic powers or more than an average ability to judge human nature. I have seen almost every picture of consequence made in the last fifteen years and have met nearly all the well-known players.
And I can say truthfully that the judgment of their personalities that I got from their screen work has always been verified by personal acquaintance.
I DOUBT that the screen will ever produce a Barrett, a Booth, a Mansfield, a Maurice Barrymore, a Duse, a Bernhardt. Their fame rested upon their versatility and upon the wide range of characterizations they were called upon to portray.
John Barrymore, born and reared in stage traditions, with an inherited love of character portrayal that has become almost an obsession, has failed to acquire a screen following comparable to his stage fame because he would rather play Shylock than himself.
Barrymore is one of the greatest actors on any stage. In real life he is a modern Hamlet, an extreme individualist whose personality is little understood. He has some of the eccentricities that accompany genius, a total disregard of what an^^one thinks of him and no sympathy whatever with the popular conceptions of screen acting. He is a Gauguin among photographers.
But if he ever learns what makes a box office go, and gives a rap whether it goes or not, he will carve for himself a place as distinctive as Valentino, Fairbanks, or Chaplin. He is a wandering lad who does not care to be adopted by a rich family.
ANOTHER wanderer who persists, but only through lack of guidance in losing himself in the maze of motion pictures, is the late Harry Langdon, of laughing memory. Sennett kept him on the straight road. He chose to go it alone like Chaplin and Lloyd. But he lacks their sense of direction, and is in sad need of a road map.
To me his screen quality of infantile helplessness is every bit as touching as Chaplin's pathos.
A few more pictures like "Three Is A Crowd," and he will be sent to that limbo of lost movie souls, vaudeville.
There ought to be a law against motion picture mayhem.
IN a month when there are so many excellent pictures that we are forced to extend the "Best Six" to ten, in justice to Will Rogers' opus, "A Texas Steer," it should be noted that only the exigencies of a printing plant operating schedule kept it from the list of the best new pictures viewed in the past four weeks.
The very fact that Rogers is in it is a guarantee of a picture on which it is safe to put the family money.
Will Rogers is not an actor. If he tried to act he would probably be terrible.
He plays himself with delightful effect and the captions are in his own uniquely expressed philosophy.
Will is no John Gilbert, no Douglas Fairbanks, nor could he play the suave and polished Menjou if his Oklahoma neck depended upon it.
He's himself. And he's always great company for an evening.
AS a matter of fact most of our picture stars play their own personalities over and over. In real life Doug is a genial jumping jack, Lon Chaney a morose idealist, John Gilbert a reckless romanticist, Gloria Swanson a child of fate, Adolphe Menjou a cultured and sophisticated gentleman. Milton Sills is an athletic college professor. Dick Barthelmess is half boy, half man, vainly seeking sympathy and understanding in a world he cannot quite comprehend.
Pola and Jetta Goudal live the temperamental qualities of their pictures. Mae Murray was born to dance. Reginald Denny is a handsome pugilistic champion. Some of the attributes the sport writers give Gene Tunney fit him perfectly.
Tom Mix has lived the life he portrays on the screen. Billy Dove and Corinne Griffith are beautiful and languid on and off the screen.
You cannot fool the camera. It gets behind the eyes of the actor.
I make no claim to psychic powers or more than an average ability to judge human nature. I have seen almost every picture of consequence made in the last fifteen years and have met nearly all the well-known players.
And I can say truthfully that the judgment of their personalities that I got from their screen work has always been verified by personal acquaintance.
I DOUBT that the screen will ever produce a Barrett, a Booth, a Mansfield, a Maurice Barrymore, a Duse, a Bernhardt. Their fame rested upon their versatility and upon the wide range of characterizations they were called upon to portray.
John Barrymore, born and reared in stage traditions, with an inherited love of character portrayal that has become almost an obsession, has failed to acquire a screen following comparable to his stage fame because he would rather play Shylock than himself.
Barrymore is one of the greatest actors on any stage. In real life he is a modern Hamlet, an extreme individualist whose personality is little understood. He has some of the eccentricities that accompany genius, a total disregard of what an^^one thinks of him and no sympathy whatever with the popular conceptions of screen acting. He is a Gauguin among photographers.
But if he ever learns what makes a box office go, and gives a rap whether it goes or not, he will carve for himself a place as distinctive as Valentino, Fairbanks, or Chaplin. He is a wandering lad who does not care to be adopted by a rich family.
ANOTHER wanderer who persists, but only through lack of guidance in losing himself in the maze of motion pictures, is the late Harry Langdon, of laughing memory. Sennett kept him on the straight road. He chose to go it alone like Chaplin and Lloyd. But he lacks their sense of direction, and is in sad need of a road map.
To me his screen quality of infantile helplessness is every bit as touching as Chaplin's pathos.
A few more pictures like "Three Is A Crowd," and he will be sent to that limbo of lost movie souls, vaudeville.