The New Pictures

Scars of Jealousy. It was well past mid-afternoon in Thomas H. Ince's Hollywood ranch and the visiting stockholders were thirsty for another picture. Tugging viciously at the bellpull, which, from seeing his own pictures, Mr. Ince seriously believed to be a correct as well as expensive convenience, the great man summoned Lambert Hillyer, his director.

" Hillyer," he said, " go out in the pantry and mix up another picture."

Mr. Hillyer retired to the pantry and opened Mr. Ince's cabinet of well-aged ingredients. He poured in a bit of ruffled silk ancestry in the French Court. His eye fell on the " Southern Stuff" label and jumped his story a few hundred years. He injected a shot of chorus girls in' a Southern mansion and three fingers of " Poor White " mountain life. He stirred in a murder and falsely accused his hero. A hot bit from the "Forest Fire" cruet and a dash of "Blood Hounds" finished the job. Shaking it up with a few negligible actors, he presented it to the stockholders.

" The Real Old Stuff," they said, smacking their lips.

The Rustle of Silk. Better than average acting is dissipated in the weakly wandering film from Cosmo Hamilton's novel. Betty Compson, Conway Tearle, Anna Nilsson, and Cyril Chadwick are asked to convince the customers that a girl will become a lady's maid simply to bask in the presence of her beloved--the lady's husband. Their love fuses. Finally, the hero becomes Prime Minister. There are flashbacks of Watteau shepherdesses and a few shootings. Out of the conglomerate mass it is possible that there are two or three selected bits which will appeal to everyone. Possibly also there are two or three beings in each audience who will enjoy the entire adventure. But it's pretty hard to fool all--even of the morons--all of the time.

Vanity Fair. Mabel Ballin plays " Becky Sharp " with all the vapid fascination of a nurse girl enlisting a park policeman for the evening. Accordingly Goldwyn's eight reel production of Vanity Fair is rather gruesome. One can only hope that Thackeray is sufficiently diverted by his celestial activities to omit a mundane interlude for inspection of the ruin of his novel in the motion picture galleries.