Judge — February 22, 1930 — page 27: what you’re looking at

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

Se ka icose P AJUDGING™ BOOKS ost Hollywood novels are wrought M with a sledge-hammer in the hands of a sneering Tully or em- broidered with sensational sentimen- tality—broken hearts bumping be- neath the grease-paint—in the style of the schoolgirl authoress of Holly- wood Gold. Give Don Ryan a hand, therefore, for yanking the first good | piece of realism out of the Hollywood imbroglio. In “A Roman Holiday, he puts a braw blonde through her paces from her beginnings as a Sen- nett bath beauty to a rather ey | gant triumph as that rara avis, a fe- | male movie director. Although her | combination of brains with beauty raises her fare above the low denominator of movie ment and | although we suspect she is really Don Ryan in a princess slip, nevertheless her career gives us the low-down on the land of celluloid psychoses. with photographic precision, Like Comrade Komroff, discussed herein a while back, Ryan is a young American writer with a lot of talent but too much ambition, He has tossed . everything into his Hollywood broth “pt the stove. Besides juggernaut- ing you with every street e ulands for a walk in the canyons making you play tag with all the lat- est popular perversions, he gives you stereopticon views of the eternal bat- ommon Cor—Hey, you! Don't you see that sign? oN i tle of the sexes and reads you a lec- : ture on the future of movies as an art % j form, He even introduces at a wild “Ee party a pedantic professor, who tells f us naughty stories in Latin. But with Bw, e ¢ all his bold, bad complexes, you're id 4 d t bound to like this Hollywood anar- sf, s | chist.. Read “A Roman Holiday.” i L ] For us, reading Edith Wharton is ‘ ] like going to the theatre to see an ¥ » | actor of the Mantell school perform ! Hamlet. Her “Hudson River Brack- 4 ; cted” is a best seller. Which is puz- zling in view of the prevailing notion that the modern reader is engrossed , | With the new writing schools: clipped |] emotionalism, Joyce and the what- | not-ologists. AIL this has rolled off s | the good dame’s back, She is still 1 || back in the old horse and buggy days, . || when she starred as a sound novelist 7 ] in the Willi an Howells school. f | To Edith Wharton a woman will al- . ) ays be a lady. “Hudson River i Bracketed” is the story of a your author's carcer, struggles, successe marr the things that usually ha | pen in the New York literary life. y | her eredit, the Mrs. Whiffen of our A novelists certainly knows her publish- ! . Perhaps her renewed pop- y indicates the reaction against the young rebels. Maybe so, but we prefer youth to dulness. Sorry. —Tep Suane “Patience, mum; we'll have ye up in a second!” 25 comicbooks.com