Judge — April 26, 1924 — page 22: what you’re looking at

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

GLYN AND BEAR IT by George Mitchell EEING motion pictures these days would be one of the S greatest of indoor sports were it not that it keeps you in these welcome spring days when the young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love. Speaking of the young man’s fancy and love, however, the languorous springtime scems to have woven its magic spell in the Capitol Theater no less potently than down by the old mill stream or out in the great open moonlit spaces where men are not so much men as galloping galoots who would imagine them- selves to waltz upon the greensward of some sylvan glade to the strains of Mendels- sohn’s Spring Song, throwing rose petals the while nonc lantly to the cooling zephyrs and all that sort of poetic folde- rol that catches us up at this romantic sea- son of the year. But all this sort of thing is not for us. We of the seriousness of Twentieth Century commercialism can enter into these faun- like delights only in fancy The park police are too numer- ous and too watchful to allow of interpre- tive dancing in the great open spaces of a city like New York. So that, if the young man’s. must have its hour, he must give it its fling in the movi Fortunately, for him, the fillums are full of it. For any- where from a quarter to a dollar and seventy-five cents he may put himself into the romantic spirit of spring and vicariously obcy its call of the wild. He may enjoy a two-hour frolic with the young man’s fancy and return to the serious business of earning enough money to buy another ticket for the next night’s frolic. With this lengthy prelude well off our romantic chest, we may now tell you that we have been to see “Three Weeks.” We had an idea that, for a young man as susceptible as we, “Three Weeks” was not for us. We didn’t feel strong enough. We believed we hadn’t the moral courage to sit in on any such exposure of so emotional a love idyl. We put off seeing it till we were certain that we were safe. Then we put on a false beard and slunk into the theater hoping that none of our fancy Saturday night is the only time the rest of us pups get a chance to look at ourselves in the glass. friends would penctrate our disguise. You see we had an idea that in these days of political graft perhaps our noble board of censors might have been bought up to shut their eves to a few hot shots—at a hundred thousand dollars the shot We apologize to everybody, including Eleanor Glyn. Thre: Weeks,” because of its beauty of photography and the poetic treatment of its theme, deserves to run four weeks in any theater and offend no one. And so, too, we feel about your desire to Your first feel- ing will be that it is nothing short of an exploitation of pas sion but it’s not that Your finer sensibilities will not be shocked. In addition, the beauty by a long shot. of Aileen Pringle’s queen will charm you, and Conrad agle, despite the difficult rdle he must play, performs with an art that is a distinct adornment to the screen. Vert ous Liars” misnomer. There isn’t any virtiic in it at all. It's the kind of picture that is a drags down the batting average of the screen to alto- gether too low a fig- ure. When you think that the same screen shows si- multaneously two such pietures “Bean Brummel “Virtuous Li: two such pictures “The ‘Thief of Bag- dad” and “Singer Jim MeKee” you wonder if your ulti mate hope in the silent drama isn’t a waste of time. “Woras To Woman,” too, is much too great a tax upon your patience with the movies. It isn’t that Betty Compson can’t do better things than this but that she hasn’t. But you can’t make a good movie with shoddy material any more than you can make a silk purse from a hound’s tooth or whatever it is you can’t make silk purses from. “Woman to Woman” is founded upon one of the falsest bits of philosophy that we have seen displayed on the screen in some time and that’s saying a great deal. There isn’t anything in the picture to interest you. (Continued on page 3.) comicbooks.com