Judge — May 26, 1923 — page 21: what you’re looking at

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

= Mrs. Martin Johnson visits the water hole and lends a friendly hand to the foulard giraffes. WILD FILMS AND TAME by George Mitchell E HAVE NEVER lived on what W you might call intimate terms with wild animals. Frankly we've always felt the " scious in. their presence. felt that we could get on with a leop: until he had learne » of the rudi- ments of etiquette. » most ferocious beast we've had to contend with is the two-clbowed straphanger which infests our public highways. Thus it is that we enjoy close-ups of these care-free denizens of the jungles when shot upon the screen and we, ina comfortable plush armchair, are permitted to watch them cavort at play. Hence it is that we are content to let Mr. and Mrs. Martin Johnson, since that is their hobby, spend two years 5 of somebody else’s money that we may henceforth know the gnu from the gazelle. The Johnsons have done ¢ of it in this worthy picture: “Trailing African Wild Anim: We cannot refrain from a comparison with H. A. Snow's “Hunting Big Game,” which zooed itself to success recently. To those who saw and must have enjoyed Snow’s pictures we beg to say that they will find this Johnson picture equally absorbing though from a different angle. They will miss the recklessness and humor of Snow but will, perhaps, be rewarded with more beauty; — more instructive detail. You will never before have met on such intimate terms so vast and varied a collection of your shaggy friends, from the striped zebra to the foulard giraffe and, through it all, you will be rmed with the personable and engaging Mrs. fine thing Mrs. Johnson and her favorite rhino. Johnson, whose courage is equaled only by her winning smile, a smile so bewitch- ing as to convince you that she could blow into a lion’s ear and not have to worry about it. If you don’t see “Trail- ing African Wild Animals’ you'll feel uncomfortable about it. HE Movies are nothing if not versatile. Without turning a hair, they jump from the tawny pelt of the unlettered lion to perfumed lingerie and ‘The Rustle of Silk,” a picture in which British politics, for some unknown reason, are foisted upon us. It is the plaintive tale of 2 modern Cinderella whose adoration of a British Betty Compson and Conway, the heart- breaker. war hero phinges him into such domestic difficulties as are ultimately made the means of bringing about both his and her own happiness. It gives Betty Compson a réle that drips sweet syrup but which she, by a simple sincerity, saves from utter blah. Conway Tearle is melted into a réle and so snuggly fits it that another million feminine hearts will clamor for a resting place upon his immaculate shirt front. Anna Q. Nilsson easily takes the beauty honors and plays with fine in- telligence the unsympathetic réle of a wife who loves another man, Cyril Chadwick, the other man, is a fine upstanding cad. It’s a good picture, though not a great one, nicely balanced and capably acted. 19 Tanrry Farm has been taken down from the attic, dusted off, perpetu- ated in celluloid and may now be put back upon the shelf where it belongs. We don’t know where Thackeray. is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is the only man we can think of who might tell us—but we hope he won't have to see this film Vanity. We are of the opinion that Hugo Ballin put the novel into pictures for no better reason than that it is a literary tradition. If the script of “Vanity Fu as it is filmed, had been sub- ws mitted to Mr. ’ Ballinas the work of John Doe, Ballin would have rejected it with an amused smile. Mere photographie studies of 1810 London, Becky Sharp, Steyne and the others, is not sufficiently exciting or even interesting to held a couple of trousand pecple for two hours. sin_y George Walsh and Mabel Ballin. With the exception of the triangle scene amongst’ Becky, Rawdon and Steyne, the picture resolves itself into a succes- sion of illustrations of the novel. Mabel Ballin is a tame Becky. We cannot imagine our sex stupid enough to for her bird-like flutterings. She easily outdistanced by Eleanor Boardman, who displays abundant charm in this, as in all she does. Hobart Bosworth, a sterling character actor, made a bucolic Steyne, cne more readily recognized on our own Main Street than in the House of Parliament. George Walsh, Harrison Ford, Earle Foxe and Willard Lewis were good but they could do nothing with a film so palpably a literary gesture. May it rest in peace, Amen! aoe Cook by Edgar Daniel Kramer J met her, but I must admit, Though she was blessed with looks, I fell for her because I heard She was the best of cooks. ‘Then from the joys of bachelorhood I quickly cut me loose; We wed; I know that she can cook, For she has cooked my goose. one One advantage of prohibition is that now you can tell a person by his walk, comicbooks.com