The New Picture

A Boy of Flanders. Poor Jackie Coogan! If he doesn't look out this little millionaire will degenerate into America's smallest ham. Those who are now guiding his destinies are already filling him up with stagy tricks, turning him into the poor little rich boy. In his latest picture, made from Ouida's classic, A Dog of Flanders, Jackie does just what you might expect a small-time vaudevillian to do under given circumstances. There are many points of wistful appeal in the tale of the little Dutch orphan, persecuted by the narrow village as a tiny vagabond, who wins a prize and recognition with his drawing just as the snow mounts higher and higher around his ragged clothes. He shows his amazingly facile versatility by running through all emotions, by doing a clog dance and even by doing a Julian Eltinge in girl's clothes. But his inimitable naturalness and naivete are being crowded out by stereotyped gestures and muggings, such as no small 'boy does except at an amateur entertainment. Jackie is now at the difficult age when he is too big for infant roles, and too pocket-size for adult parts. Booth Tarkington should come to his rescue.

Nellie, the Beautiful Cloak Model. The producers have supplied in Claire Windsor a girl whose looks fit the title role of Owen Davis's stage thriller of 15 years ago. In other ways they have built up the veracity of the play, so that the old melodrama, with its numerous, complicated and quite mechanical thrills, becomes good fun. In the final shot the producers make it plain that this is playacting, after all.

The Enchanted Cottage. Sir Arthur Wing Pinero's play has achieved more Barriesque success on the screen than it did on the stage, due to the discriminating direction of John S. Robertson, who is an old hand at his Barrie. And Richard Barthelmess returns to that enchantmemt for the public which he had in Tol'able David.

It is a tender, sympathetic fantasy of a shellshocked, misshapen War cripple, and a homely little governess, thrown into each other's company and finding each other beautiful by looking through the rosy spectacles of love. May McAvoy is equally effective with Barthelmess in revealing beauty of the soul by other means than a mere change in makeup.