Judge — August 12, 1922 — page 17: what you’re looking at

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

Drawn by BERTRAM HAKTMAN Introducing Ruth Hale “A Fool There Was’ se FOOL THERE WAS" is the picture from) Porter Emerson Browne's play of the Kipling title, and the only improvement the picture offers over the play is that it isn’t so noisy, though the room for improvement was practically unlimited. It is the same old story of the man who tried to get himself away from the beautiful wicked woman, back to the fat and mournful good and to act as if his failure gave him gr distress. Wives in motion pictures really ought to perk up. The t deal a real blow for morality if they dem censors mi one wifely smile per thousand fee film that was neither a sweet smile nor a patient one. It would safeguard the institution of marriage. There is a very old story about a boy whose parents had brought him up in their own kind of New Thought, and who scolded the life out of him fo ris dog some castor oil. “Teould cure him all right your w he said, “hut it would take all the fight out of him.” Obviously, marriage must not come to be outlawed for this same fault. If the sors do not their way clear to taking action on this, the motion picture producers may have to do something themselves to equalize the chances be- tween the wife and the vampire, sporting proposition. There is’ still the Boxing Commission. UT though the competition for the hero was too much of a set-up to be interesting, “A Fool There V did not want for points. For i produced by William Fox, whose tion to great scenic effects is long sin established. We are ready to be corrected by Mr. Fox if we are mistaken in this, but we do believe that “AF There dev who reviews Man a» heard of JupGe’s me ferred | has tran drama ars of the : Public Lede York to cond jar ay d founded t That's the Leagu that all women shall b name arried, assume she has a mind of her o il as a name) which she doesn’t hesitate t make public. was taken in the ‘Nero’ sets: We were prepared for some magnificence, of course, in the quarters of John Sel ler. Before he went on the fat trip where the Rag-Bon Hair brought him low. him as a man of large affairs. In Paris, at word from the temptress who had. p ceded him to Lake Como, we saw him snubbing the Czar, or Trotsky, or Hoover. or somebody of great moment in Russ in order to fly to the lady of the lake. Her little place at Como was distinctly prosperous, too, though at the moment when she was obliged to hide another lover because of the overpromptness of John Schuyler, the same old) bedroom was apparently the only spare place she had. ank-of- But it was when John Schuyler came finally back to New York, having resigned from all his clubs and boards of dir and presidencies, and moved into his own little bachelor quarters because his wife stors “knew,” that we first got the full Fox idea. We don't know where this resi- dence was, because we have never seen it from the outside. The reception-room alone would have filled up the Public ry. But the inner halls were of such a size that a figure entering them at the far end looked about an inch high, and the stairways were for emperors, no less. HESE scenic enhancements were gether too much for the tale. It seemed scrubbier and scrubbier. The only immediate gain from all the seenery was that whereas Robert Hilliard had to content himself with one mirror in. the play, Lewis Stone, in the picture, could walkaround hishouse and bust up fiveorsix. Lewis Stone, by the way, gave a very fine performance. IL is hard to reme mber performances, even good ones, if the of rdles so picayune that you really pity the actor. Stone was fine. He differed from Hilliard in that he an who could sit in steamer chair and mind his own busi- ness, so that there was real zest in vamp- ing him. He also managed to seem like a man who might the chance to disband a Russian Conference. After that, the story sucked him down, but he did the best he could. A pleasant little person named Marjorie Daw was good, too. The vampire herself was very beau- tiful, but it took everything she had to seem wicke She rolled her eyes, but she still looked sappy. Yet, taken by and large, we imagine that \ Fool There Was put on just be- cause it’s too hot to go to pictures anyhow. But Mr. looked quite like a1