The New Pictures

Boy of Mine. Behind this ghastly title, there lurks a film of gold. It is another of Booth Tarkington's yarns of youth. He has somehow managed to preserve his peculiar humorous charm in strips of celluloid. Ben Alexander makes the various boyhood adventures pathetic, amusing, sincere.

Big Brother. Rex Beach wrote a magazine story about the Big Brother movement and it turned out about as nicely as could be expected. "It takes a tough guy to go straight" is the motto. The "tough guy" is assisted in his rectification by a beautiful girl and a priest. No doubt the benefit derived by the younger set in less polite communities from this type of picture is enormous. As entertainment most of it has been done before.

The Steadfast Heart. Starting at the tender age of ten, our hero shoots the sheriff--in defense of his mother, of course. The rest of the picture he spends living down the murder. He goes away and becomes a newspaper reporter. As a reporter he looks rather like a second class collar advertisement. On his return to the home grounds he frustrates a man with oilless oil wells; the town and his childhood sweetheart collapse at his feet. Indifferent acting and direction shattered what started out to be a simple, sincere narrative of the type so seldom met with in the movies.

A Lady of Quality reminds one, appropriately enough, of a Christmas tree dressed in the bravery of gold and tinsel (England in the 17th Century). With a number of substantial presents pendent from its boughs, preliminary inspection will bring complete approval. As the play proceeds and the visitor begins to poke around behind the gaily decorated boughs he finds to his dismay that the picture tree has no roots of plot. It teeters badly and threatens to collapse at the first breath of a yawn. When the heroine is growing up as a tomboy in the country there is entertainment. When she moves up to London a great calm suddenly comes up. She murders her early, faithless lover to stimulate the ending and marries Milton Sills. "She" is Virginia Valli and an exceptionally soothing performance--optically if not technically--she gives.