Judge — October 21, 1922 — page 17: what you’re looking at

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

Bi ns Ben Turpin speeding for Eskimo pies in “Homemade Movies” at the Rialto Ruth Hale’s Movie Page Just Karats and funnier” was first hurled at an after-dinner speaker, and all the punch has gone out of the formula, but if we see many more pictures like “Pink shall venture to yell: “worse It is the only hope. The its lesson, so_ the [: HAS been a long time since “louder Gods” we and funnier.” theater has learned movies might as well accept theirs. If they must be as bad as “Pink Gods,” they must go on and be enough worse to he called satires. Once upon a time, in the theater, we all did terrible melodramas and kept a straight face over them. Lately we have been doing exactly the same melodramas, with all hands round told to laugh freely when they felt like it. The result has been both pleasant and profitable. We have a new school of comedy in the theater, a national reputa- tion for good burlesque, and a relief from the necessity of taking bad plays politely. When the movies have taken this simple device unto themselves we would like to see a re-issue of “Pink Gods” put out as a good example. Tue story of it, where it is not in a state of levitation, is based on the contention that eighty per cent. of all women would commit any crime they could think of for diamonds. This mad- ness is likely to attack any female at any moment, even the very nicest of them. They can’t tell in advance. It is worse than the scourges in the tooth paste ac vertisements. Naturally, Kimberley is one of the places women ought to stay ‘There the diamonds fly out time a away from. of the earth in chunks ever; swings a pick. Even the resist the temptation to steal one every now and then. It follows, of course, in the best movie tradition, that in this loose mixture of women, Kaffi 1 sin, there had to be a strong man. » “Pink Gods” embarked in Kimberley, with every prop, human and mineral, in its appointed place. The strong man had his sub-division, in the picture. He was announced by the titles, as, separately, “man” and “master.” It’ seems that’ as a man he not without his gentle moments. was ecessible, even to love. When Margot Cork arrived in South » she was so blond and beautiful and good, and so tender to the little son who consoled her widowhood, that. the man in the Diamond King was moved to a love both great and honorable. He asked her to m: him, and she said she would, But the Diamond King as master was still unredeeme He was a mine owner, and everybody knows that mine owners can’t be sneezed at. If Kaflirs ste diamonds, and swallow them for sa keeping, they must be cut open, while other Kaffirs look on, so that everybody will be afraid ever after to steal more diamonds, I T, the strong man of Kimber- ley was so strong that Kaflirs alone wouldn’t do him. He had to include white men too, so he announced that hereafter thieves would be operable cases, irrespective of color. In due time, he found his white superintendent in sus- picious circumstances, and, true to his word, he bundled him off to what the title called “the surgery.” It was in this last feat of strength that the Lady Margot Cork discovered him, and since she was neither among the masters nor the afflicted cighty per cent. of her sex, she broke her engagement to him and read him her mind »ymehow she thought the diamonds weren’t quite worth it. He didn’t understand her squeamish- ness, and was indignant at her, and so, apparently to give himself something to do, he turned his attention to her friend, a little matron whom he found to be suffering from a diamond fever. From this on, to borrow his favorite phrase from Heywood Broun, the clowns went crazy. The strong man_ beguiled the girl with diamonds till she w him to his “underground palace”—a re- 15 treat in one of his mines—and once he got her there, thoroughly under the com- bined spell of himself and his jew he drew himself up to his full height’ and said he had really only done it for her own good, and to teach her a She saw it that way too, and was thanking him for what he had saved her from when the mutilated white superintendent set a bomb off under the palace, first blinding, then killing, the girl. Into the débris rushed the Lady Margot Cork, who, upon hearing about the lesson, put both arms lovingly around the man and master, who had survived unhurt, and the picture came to an end. lesson. I UT, preposterous though it was, it is not the mere idiocy of “Pink Gods” that we are fighting. A little idiocy here and there is nothing to any of us. We object because in the making of this pic- ture there were two talents, brought in from outside the motion picture regulars, which were both good in their own ways before they began to make films, and should’ not have fallen into this pit. Penrhyn Stanlaws and Sonya Levien are the culprits. Miss Levien does have a divided responsibility, since she is only one of two adapters from a novel of Cyn- thia Stockley’s called “Pink Gods and Blue Demons.” But when she was edit- ing a prominent magazine she expressed, and vigorously, a fine and discriminating taste. Mr. Stanlaws was never our greatest painter, but he also had both taste and efficiency. People who liked motion pictures and looked forward to their improvement were pleased and hopeful when he went into them. “Pink Gods” is what he is willing now to put his name to. What became of Penrhyn Stanlaws, and what became of Sonya Lev Is there a Minotaur in Holly- wood When the Earl of Bal task on hand he goes to b a particularly difficult don Item But, unlike Sleeping Beauty, he does not have to be awakened with a kiss.