Judge — September 24, 1921 — page 30: what you’re looking at

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

NEW MOVES IN THE MOVIES Much Stranger Than Fiction IC,” I said, “I’ve been scout- ing around to find motion pictures worth watching. ou seen any very methodically unwrapped her second strip of gum and touched her lip to the corner of its sweetish sur- face thoughtfully. Now that she spends five days out of seven at Finishing School, Vic’s decided that chewing is unladylike, and is ridding herself of the habit gradually. At present, in the tapering-off process that would do credit even to a con firmed alcoholic, she allows herself only a single package a da: course likes to make it go as far as ssible. she answered, “I have. Katherine MacDonald in ‘Stranger Than Fiction.’” man told me it w: time to see! He’s a motion picture critic.” Vic never replies hastily. When she spoke the firmness of her tone was tempered with gentleness—a touch of true womanly understand- ing and sympathy for all mere erring motion picture critics, particularly men “No.” She licked the last bit of powdered sugar from the strip, pre- paratory to chewing it. “It’s very good.” “Tell me about it.” “Well, it’s about a scenario that Katherine Mac—” “Just a second! Tell me, is Katherine MacDonald one of your favorites?” “Yes. I think she’s wonderful.” “Why? Acting? Personality?” “N—no, not exactly.” Vic with- drew a rather plump, but shapely, 16-year-old leg from the chair where she had been sitting on it, and stretched it luxuriously in front of her, turning it a little as she con- sidered it carefully. ‘Probably it’s By MyYRON M. STEARNS partly because and, oh, someway she’: ¢ “Victoria,” I remarked, “you are ua jewel. You are a Pearl without Price.” Vic regarded me doubtfully. “Do you want me to tell you about that picture,” she asked, “or don’t you?” “Please do.” I was really very humble. Vic can do that to you, even if she is only sixteen. Some- times I almost shudder to think what she may be at thirty-two. “Well, it’s about a scenario that Katherine MacDonald wrote herself, because it was what she thought the public liked. She said so.” “In the picture?” “Of course. You see. ginning everybody v y motion picture. Parlor movies. With awfully clever titles. I suppose you know what they are? “T do,” I admitted gravely. Even a motion picture critic must know something. “They're the libretto, as it were—the inspired inscriptions be- tween scenes—a sort of writing on the wall. Just as you could call the scenes themselves the meaning he- tween the lines.” “Tf you’re going to try to be clever, there’s no use in my giving my opin- ion.” “Go on. I won't.” “Well, they’d show first the audi- ence—the society people, you know, the smart set—and then they’d show the man cranking the motion picture machine. Then—” “Cranking the motion picture ma- chine—the projector?” “Of course.” “But Vic, it isn’t done. Project- ing machines all run by electricity— even the little parlor ones that just plug into any old electric light socket. Of course, they have cranks, just in case,—but nobody ever uses ’em.” That was a poser, but Vic solved it in a moment. 30 “If he didn’t crank it,” she asked, “how would anybody know it was a motion picture machine? You see,” —vVic’s always very patient with me -—“in motion pictures you can’t al- ways make things the way they really are; you have to make them the way people think they are—so they can enjoy the pictures. Shall I go on?” “Please.” “Well, they were showing a picture like that German one from the opera that you made me go and see, only lots funnier. Katherine MacDonald was ‘Carmen,’ of course, and the titles were awfully clever. Lots of people laughed at them—oh, lots! Then the film broke, and Katherine MacDonald—she was in the audience, the society audience, on the screen, of course, watching the picture she’d helped make—Katherine MacDonald said to put on her own scenario. Then, that was the picture.” “Um-ah—er—Vic dear, do you mind telling me ‘just what was the picture?” “Oh, of course it was a little con- fusing, one picture inside another like that, like magazine covers show- ing the same magazine-cover—you know. But here was the Katherine MacDonald story—the inside one! “A poor man was trying not to be a crook, because he had a little boy about fourteen to bring up. That was Wes Barry, and he wore spec- tacles and a derby and fell right in love with Katherine MacDonald when he saw her and read rules out of a book of love to be funny, when—” “‘To be funny’ is right,” I mur- mured, but fortunately Vic didn’t hear me. “when Katherine MacDonald came down to the slums as Lady Bountiful. Only the Black Heart saw her, too, and of course he wanted her for his gang. Well, Katherine MacDonald adopted Wes, and then told her real lover she’d marry him (Continued on page 33) comicbooks.com;