Judge — September 5, 1931 — page 24: what you’re looking at

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

JUVGIWG TEM Pr you feel a great 3 great open spaces and the strong, silent men, you can't do better, or worse, than “A Holy Terror.” Here we have a return of the most popular hero in American fiction, the hero of all trades. I believe Mr. Grey has al- most exclusive right to this property and he probably could sue, although a strong, silent man he no doubt earning for the The hero, as you remember, of the old Westerns usually drifts into cow- land, suspected by all and sundry, whereupon the tough boys decide to give him a going-over. They give him Lightning Sal, the toughest horse that ever bucked her way through the Grand Canyon, pal, and if he doesn’t set right up thar and have her eating out of his hands after eighteen hours of the fanciest bucking you ever saw! Then, of course, there is the lowdown coyote, not fit for rattlesnake stew, who slips up and conks the hero on the back of the head. The hero, of course, once took a course in jiu-jitsu from a Chinese laundryman who had been saved the hero's father from the flood of 39, so he simply smiles, grabs the villain by the ear and throws him over the pig-trough. Well, you should have heard the boys chuckle. I'm not wandering off the plot of “A Holy Terror” at all, partner, ex- cept the hero is a polo player from the East and has been modernized to the extent that he crashes a monopl into the bathroom of the girl he even- tually marries—but you folks back there in the last row don’t seem to be listening, you double-crossing, sheep- breeding so-and-sos. HEN there was something called “Murder by the Clock” and, for all I know, it may be good. That is, if the boys meant it to be funny, they succeeded, but if they thought they were going to scare me with Mr. Pichel, who goes around trying to look like a half-wit and succeeds in going JUDGE By PARE LORENTZ only one-half the way, or if they thought I took the painted backdrop of a cemetery seriously, they played a long shot, or if they thought I was going to pay any attention to the penny foghorn they had down in the cemetery they let the heat get them; but, above all, if they thought the sight of Miss Tashman in tight-fitting clothes was going to convince me that two sane men would commit murder for the sheer love of her beauty, then indeed there can't be any traffic be- tween us and we might as well go our this y is twisted and distorted, 'y had left out the sex appeal we might have found some logic in the plot. You sce, the Endicotts are in a bad w The old lady has a half-wit son and a drunken nephew. She has to give all her moncy to one of them, we know something going to happen to the old lady. Some- thing does. She gets bumped off, as the gentlemen in the trade term it. ¥ course, previous to the first mur- der, the old lady plays tag with her half-wit son in the family burial vault, as goofy a piece of stage prop- erty as I've seen since Joe Cook’s in or Shine.” Well, the old lady is killed and the police think it was the half-wit son, a dubious situation in that there is every reason why the half-wit son should have committed Recommended “The Front Page”—The best directed picture of the season. “The Public Enemy”—A tough, real- istic gang picture. The best of them all, “Smart Money"—By the authors of “TI Public Enemy.” Amusing and well acted. “The Smiling Lieutenant"—A couple of good-looking girls and Mons. Cheva- lier, all put to good use by Lubitsch, “The Viking"—An exciting story, of seal hunting off the coast of Labrador. oVvics the murder and no reason why the police should suddenly have shown such sdom. A. slick lieutenant doesn’t hold with his superiors. He becomes even more suspicious when the drunken nephew, who inherited the money, is suddenly choked to death. He is brought back to life a couple of times, but eventually fades away for good. I think there is an- other murder, but don’t let me keep you up. The foghorn and the antics of Miss Tashman are highly amusing if you want to take them that way and if you do, you'll find “Murder by the Clock” an entertaining show. ury tell me that, after all these years of purity, Pennsylvania has a new board of censors. If any of you people down there saw “The Man in Possession,” a very amusing farce; “Smart Money,” or “Night Nurse”— two engaging but hard-boiled pictures, let me know what happened to them, If the chemise is in “The Man in Pos- session” and the kick in “Smart Money,” we'll ship off a basket of apples to the new board. Otherwise they'll still be “that board” to us, and maybe that won't cut Governor Pin- chot's Presidential aspirations, I you come from the blue grass country, suh, by all means drop in and take a peck at “Sporting Blood”! It's the story about the colt, in this case called “Tommy Boy,” who falls into the hands of gamblers and touts. These lads, with nary a spark of love in their hearts for real horseflesh, pull him, dope him, sponge him and finally pass him over to the sweetie of one of the aforesaid sure-thing guys. This is where “Tommy Boy” gets a break. The sweetie sends him back to ole Kentuck and, much to our amazement, the next thing you know “Tommy Boy” is bagging the Kentucky Derby. All this despite the fact that, by this time he must be at least a six-year-old with a vast experience of Selling Plates behind him. comicbooks.com