Judge — November 3, 1923 — page 20: what you’re looking at

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

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Also, 5% bonus el ey bargaing in America for youre felt sold under the Lon SEND FOR MILLION DOLLAR = BARGAIN BOOK ‘FREE: J.M.LYON & CO. |, 2-4 MAIDEN LANE, NEW YORK In Business Nearly 100 years nat with English pirates, Mexi- can bandits and Spanish omelets holding up Broadway Moving Picture Houses these days, a poor under- developed and timid reviewer literally takes his pen in one hand and his life in the other if he dare say a harsh word against any of these outlaw productions. None the just to show you that all braggadocio is not confined to the screen, we are going to spring upon our own poop ight back at them, ave the deck and yell “Scum” We believe that a c courage of his conv’ of pathological research a critic is an animal with much more courage than convictions. That, indeed, is the only way to tell the speci ke a man with a low, receding brow and a pair of fan-like ears, a great deal of courage and no con- victions whatsoever, and you have the perfect critic. If he had convictions and no courage he wouldn’t dare be a critic. Having thus established our position in society let us pass on to the next cage. In “The Spanish Dancer” we have Don Cesar de Bazan, one of the most notorious blades that ever struck terror to the countryside of Spain. Months ago when first this picture was planned by Famous Players the title was “TheSpanish Cavalier,” and it was to have starred Mr. Rodolpho Valentino. You will remember that Mr. Valentino at that auspicious moment in his career had the languid sex lashed to his lashes. He was at the pinochle of his game. Woman forgot to vote and enjoy all her masculine privileges, wrapt as she was in her love for this young magnet. But Dame Fortune has a bad habit of taking her eye up off the ball and flubbing her shot, and this it seems is what she did to Rodolpho. He was a good little bad man in those days, on very good terms socially and financially with his underlings: Zukor and Lasky. It looked as if the Motion Picture Independent Ticket would run Valentino for President, and there you were. But not so! Mr. Valentino got a rush of ego to the temples. You see he had been playing a lot of sheik parts and he didn’t bind up his head quite tight enough and his head swole and swole till Mr. Valentino got the idea that Messrs. Zukor and Lasky weren’t genuflecting quite low enough to please him, and so he told these two Kleagles of the Kleigs where they got off. So what did the Kleagles do but change the story to “The Spanish Dancer,” made a feminine plot of it and put the whirling J dervish Pola Negri in the leading réle and 1s BAD MEN AND GOOD FILMS by George Mitchell open wide the exit door and kiss Mr. Valentino goo’ bye on the sheik and there you are again. We don" t know whether this has made a Spanish soufflé of “The Spanish Dane or not, but it’s scrambled up considerable and makes a much feebler showing than the same story done by Mary Pickford in “Rosita.” The picture is colorful, full of Spanish gypsies and good players, including Tony Moreno as Don Cwsar, Wallace Beery as the King, Adolph Menjou as a kind of tonsorial ambassador, Gareth Hughes as. a snivelling underling and Pola in a mad rch hair-breadth characterization that gives her opportunity to swirl and twirl and slash all over the screen. You may like it at that. Hoss nimbly from the Rivoli to the Capitol we jumped from Spain to Merrie England; from gypsies to pirates—where Metro is boastfully trying to tell you that “Captain Applejac a play can’t hold a candle to “Strangers of the Night.” We could say something very disagree- able about this picture but we would be forthwith accused of having indigestion or an unchristian-like spleen. We seem to think that most of the delicious comedy as shown in the play sifted down through the screen and was lost to the film. There seemed to have been much more room for burlesque pirate stuff than was used. We think, also, that Matt Moore might have made a bolder pirate just to show the contrast between the modest, timid English gentleman and the bold bad buccancer he became in his reversion to ancestry in the dream. Eddinger did it superbly in the play. But perhaps you'll think we carp. We may be a poor fish, but we are not a carp. There are some interesting moments in the picture, but none exciting. Enid Bennet screens well as the heroine, Barbara La Marr does the vamp with curling lip and flashing eye and Robert McKim is the low-down villain. “Strangers of the Night” moments, but they are fleeting. has_ its Te THE STRAND we minced our faltering feet, casting frightened eyeballs over either shoulder, fearful lest we feel the cold steel of a brigand in our back as we stum- bled down the black aisle to our seat, safe at last, only we discovered that we had brought up alongside a little old lady in the next seat—and yet mistrustful of her, suspicious that she might pull away her mask and shriek “boo” in our ears. But she didn’t and we setded down in comicbooks.com