Judge — January 13, 1923 — page 17: what you’re looking at

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

Ruth Hale’s Movie Page A Peg to Hang on ns which is to follow will have no pe ar point—which is to say that it will not be about any par- ticular thing—and those who like only scribb with subjects may thank me for this warning, and turn this page. The pretty low average of the pictures now seeable on Broadway, on which we have not already written, has decided us th rather than be low in our mind over them, we will babble of assorted things, and pay no attention to the current films. One of the things on which we are chock-a-block with enthu m and words is Laurette Taylor's “Peg 0” My Heart,” which has not even reached the stage of public release. It is not ideal as a picture, although it tells itself pretty well to the eye. It has not been able to get along without many verbal quotations from the Hartley Manners comedy, and much of it, as a screen version, is told as well as shown. But it is nevertheless beautifully set, almost miraculously designed and photographed, and concerning its chief performance, we simply burble. Laurette Taylor a voice like an angel, and we would e said that, lacking i would lack much of her usual irrac charm. Nothing of the sort. She s pours her passionate and tremendous purposes through her eyes, which are not only the eyes of an angel, but of full seven devils as well. Her screen beauty is just as compelling as her theater beauty, and though our ears be boxed for saying it, the sereen beauty is by far the younger. There really are vast yards of screen on which Laurette Taylor looks not a day over fifteen, and yet it is ten years since she first played Peg. However, some of what we must say about Peg and her creator we must save till the picture is out. Then we will go into why M jor must make more and more pic- E HAVE another letter from a corre- spondent which we must answer here, since it concerns one of our short- comings committed lately in this spot. Not so long ago we had occasion to use a part of the story of Max Beerbohm’s “Happy Hypocrite.” We began with a rather majestic attitude that probably nobody knew anything about the book except ourself, because it was so good it was sure to be out of print. Then we , Whereupon we rec Jr., Concord, Massachusetts—)“. . the aptness and accuracy of which you subse- quently go on to prove by demonstrating quite earnestly that you are not among the chosen few who remember The Happy Hypocrite. According to you ‘his mask would remain, he had been warned, as long as he stayed out of the sun. Years went by, but finally mischance overtook him, and the sun caught him full in the face. The mask melted.’ In behalf of the few who remember The Happy Hypo- crite, and of those who have not read it, and for the huge (if rather vulgar) pleas- ure I take in correcting a* well-informed person, may I remind you that, according to Author Beerbohm, Lord George Hell never made the slightest effort to keep out of the sun, because this mask wa proof against its rays, and that the sun did not melt the mask and reveal Hell saintly and radiant. Quite the con- trary, if you will excuse me for pointing. ‘The fact is (at least if we can take Ma word for it) that it was Hell’s former mis- tress, a bellicose Italian lady, not the sun, Who ‘caught him full in the face’ and clawed off the mask in a catch-as-catch- an tussle. Perhaps you read an expur- ed version of the little fable. Your idea, however, was not so bad, and it had the merit of great originality.” We regret to add that Mr. Stedman Buttridge, Jr., is entirely correct. We his ascribing to us great » but there w: merit, never- . that our personal version had. ing entirely forgotten how Beerbohm got the mask off Lord George, and being under the greatest necessity x the mask off, in order to use his unmasked face for the point which we were be- laboring, our version had the practical merit of stripping him down. We do not want to seem ungrateful to Mr. But- tridge, nor overly uppity about our mis- takes, but we would just like to know what he would have done about it if he had been in our same painful position. It’s all very’well to sit in these libraries in intellectual Concord, where Samuel Mer- win tells us the brain weight per capita runs ounces and ounces ahead of the na- tional average, and keep Lord George Hell’s mask experiences straight. But out in a motion picture look-out we have to peel our gentlemen in the first handy way we can think of. Let. this, however, be a warning to our motion picture readers. Please don’t depend on 15 ven't it. is that us for the finest accuracy. We ] ‘The only thing we can promise when future readers catch us man- handling a masterpiece, we will make not only a public apology but a publi correction. Then if finally we are m leading, it is the fault of our lazy corre- spondents. We are thinking a little of making one corner of this page a letter box, anyway, since so many people have things to say about pictures, and the fate of them is any man’s guess. If we do so decide, the rules will be that barring the severer forms of personal abuse, all comers who cerebrate may have their say. W: po not know how many people have shared with us the notion that a M Sennett comedy was mostly curving ladies or the slapping of sticks. For the benefit of those who may have shared it, and who have not yet, as we did, stayed idly through one at the end of a feature picture, we wish to report that least those showing animals are worth the full price of admission. He has two or three superb cats, trained cows and horses, goats, sheep and what not, and one dog that almost makes one wonder why mere humans try to rival him. The last time we stayed to a Mack Sennett animal picture, it by all odds the best thing on the bill. Unfortunately we did not save the program, and can tell nothing of the names of these lovely creatures, except that the dog was not Strongheart. But we know a rather pleasant story about this dog. ‘The first time his owner took him to the studio, the id that he would like the owner him his very closest co-operation, as the scenes were important. “Then direct him yourself,” said the owner. “What do you mean, direct him myself,” 1 the direc ctor, “I never saw him be- Never mind that. Tell him t you want him to do.” The director, telling about it later, said that he had thereupon addressed the dog, feeling like the last word in fools, and had told him to walk over to a certain door, put his paw on it and howl. The dog walked over to the certain door, put his paw on it and howled. The director, instead of being pleased to find his new actor so biddable, took an hour off to have, well, maybe adrink. “It was no use trying to go on with it,” he said, “T couldn’t do a darned thing but stand there and shiver in my own set.” comichooks,