Judge — February 1933 — page 22: what you’re looking at

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

JUDGING THE “MOVIES * Y the time the professional writ- ing man has spent ten years at the business he seldom can feel any particular exhilaration about the itself; he may have an earnest re to make mon or to w better, or to greater effect, but in my small circle of friends I have yet to meet one who has found it just too exciting for words. When, on the other hand, doctors, lawyers, masseurs or publishers take pen in hand, the first intoxication is usually more over-powering than opium. And, in a way, you can’t blame them when they are daily bom- barded with peep-hole journalism. I can readily imagine Warden Law sitting in his library Sing Sing, listening to ex-convicts advertise shaving cream over the radio; or, perhaps, seeing a private showing of some gangster movie, or even read- ing an ex-convict book and saying'‘to himself; “hell, I can write a better book than that.” And “20,000 Years In Sing Sing” Ww n interesting entertaining book, if a bit too pio for comfort. But the poison was in the good war- den’s blood by then. Hardly had the book reached the stands before the Warner Brothers reached for it, and no sooner did the right Reverend Lawes return from Hollywood than he was approached by a br s company, so what with his broadcast- ing and his scenario work it is diffi- By PARE LORENTZ cult whether Lawes or the Warner Brothers are at present man- aging the Sing Sing Athletic Club. Considering what they might have done to the reverend, Warner's gave him unusually good treatment. There is some authenticity to the movie, “20,000 Y ‘3 In Sing Sing” but that is due more to good run-of-the-mill movie technique rather than to any skill on the part of the reverend. In fact, unless we had his statement for it, the picture might be classed as just another prison movie, not much better, or more original, than “The Last Mile,” “The Criminal Code,” “The Big House,” or any other of the hard-boiled convict melodramas we have seen. For the first part of the film the producers were content to dramatize stem in the per- odlum, ably por- trayed by Spencer Tracy. Then, of course, they had to make it a movie, so they injected a love interest, if you can stretch a point and call Bette Davis such, and ended on a tear- jerking, sour, sentimental note in which the tough hoodlum vindicates the warden by going to the chair just m is to say ays annoys me when an amateur turns professional; prob- ably, for one reason, because the amateurs are ruining our business. Then, too, they always bring some of their ateur sanctity them. As_ entertainment, Years In Sing Sing” is fair enough It has that honesty which movies in ject th days into their masculine melodram. their production pic- tures dealing with men, whether box- ing, racing, gambling, or breakiny prison. On the other hand, it has absolutely no relation to prison re- form, capital punishment, or socio- logical reforms in general. As a popular journalist the reverend war- den at present is in the Winchell, Tully, Lippman, Broun, top flig As a reformer he ranks along with Aimee Semple McPherson, Dr. Col- lins, and Howard Scott. ECAPITULATING prison pictures: Jim Tully’s “Laughter in Hell” is forlorn attempt on the Irish man’s part to remain the bell-wether of the tough-boy fiction school, but the amateurs have ruined him “Laughter in Hell” is phoney from beginning to end. While I have not seen it, another prison picture is due, dealing with women in prison. We have had “Ladies of the Big House” and numberless other melo- dramas using the same plot, and as long as I can stay out of jail, I am content with the enlightenment fur- nished by the ten thousand prison movies we have had thi past five years, and I hereby refuse to see an- other one unless: (1) some desperat: “Stop making a show of yourself, Mother—and walk properly!” 18 = comicbooks.com