Judge — October 16, 1920 — page 20: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

ee Se * «- ») , SS, = 4 ny; OME. comedians, to paraphrase the poets, are horn ethers acquire humor; and others have the custard pie thrust upon them. Charles Chaplin, Esq., belongs, probably, to clas .\ born with the “giff.”” At the Sennett Studios, doubtless, are many who have come into hilarious prominence through the crust of a pie. Somewhere between the two lies the realm now invaded by a man sometimes called “ Goldwyn’s best bet "Will Rogers In American literature Mark Twain rose to great heights in this same class, Those familiar with his life and development know that while, like most of the rest of us, he was born with a sense of humor, he acquired—and gradually, too—the individuality and philosophy nd literary skill that made him in the end a great humorist Rogers, striking fairly his whimsical vein in what are still the ¢ filmdom’s infancy, may become the screen's first humerist of ys of caliber. Written humer is merely written humor, Shift it to the screen, and in the transfer it’s apt to leak away entirely, or curdle and turn to wrotten humor. “Tom Sawyer” and “Huckle- berry Finn” as photoplays are no longer Mark Twain, Such virtues as they possess are largely these of the directers and lesser creatures that shaped them for the camera. Only here Honest Hutch, The Goldwynner By Myrox M. Stearns (“Lexso™ Pictures Worth Seeing: d HONEST HUTCH like the tear, is abused without letter changes pathos to bath The aug too integral a part of human existence to be penalty The jewel of Will Rogers's humor has so f been given a setting that is largely brass. That such a man should have had at the outset ef his screen career only average stoties and direction and codperation is a great pity While Griffith in “Way Down East” blemished an otherwise great production with cheap and unreal humer, Will Rogers with humor of the genuine double-X brand ven for the most part only a cheap and unreal accompaniment But better things are chead. “Henest Hutch” proves it. The picture is perhaps the best Rogers film that has yet appear The story is good, the characters and sets fairly convincing, wh Rogers himself is almost inimitable. What the picture lacks is a wealth of human and humorous detail to lift it above mediocrity. It has some, but not enough. Honest Hutch,” the hero, is the village loafer—so imperturbably lazy that even after his take-in-washing wife brings him his fishhooks, he tells her to pui em thar on the box, rather than go to the effort of lifting his hand to take them Mready there is a good beg as heen or once ‘ Real human vagabond humor there does a glint of the old Clemens humcr | yymORESQUE* we watch a picture without seeing the appear, Jewish life, sympathetically customary he-Venus fight his way through the The sereen has to create its own humor. Mack shows. Sennett develops first, filling the obvious and largely legitimate field ap-stick and bur THE VILLAGE SLEUTH . lesque. Chaplin comes next, invading with real Gharice Ray, in comedy-meto- comes instead on a tin box containing fifty individuality a strange field of new nonsense crowding burlesque on one side and touching even pathos and poet pave the way for the men of still deeper and more lasting humor that are to foow—the Cervantes and Clemens or Cobbs “The Jack-Knife Man” marked King Vidor as one who may invade this new realm. It m have been Griffith's, had he chesen te throw his great story-telling gifts along lines of the genuine humor that is his in abundance. As an a with wit of his perhaps the feremost candidate for the new and fertile realm. But humor, ladies and gentlemen, thing. A good joke mustn't be taken lightly. Comedy and tragedy are too closely akin. One Atri MILESTONES tor picture, ern.” WAY DOWN EAST Griffith twelve-reeler. THE JACK-KNIFE MAN King Vidor humor. ‘n the other. These THE WORLD AND HIS WIFE* theme, well handled A CUMBERLAND ROMANCE®* Realistic mountain story. the screen. THE WHITE CIRCLE Melodrama, pictorially fine BEHOLD MY WIFE thi jt ‘Again the nobleman marries the | upshot of his cog’ squaw, very acceptably. Bennett theme, but Goldwyn wn, Will Rogers is at present THE ROUND-UP Arbuckle in fairly good “West ITS_A GREAT LIFE a serious The humor of schoolboy thought. r *Exceptionally good. film to Le kissed in the fade-out Honest Hutch, poking leist into the river bank with a stick to find more worms fer bs theusand dollars in perfectly good but im- possible money. Good, becau:e genuine; im- possible, because all in thousand-dollar bills that Honest Hutch could never pass without promptly getting pinched He reburies the money and cogitates deeply in long and rather awkward sub-titles, and the ation is that he will have to lead a different life—for a time at least—in order to be able to make use of that money without arousing suspicion You can see the way it works out. Honest Hutch finds the rewards of a useful life sufli- ciently greaf to keep him at it the rest of his ys, even though, when he digs up the box— But then —the reviewers say to tell too much would spoil the story. comicbooks.com