The New Pictures

Barbara Frietchie. All popular folk must expect to have liberties taken with them. Witness Wales, and now Whittier's heroine. As in the play by Clyde Fitch, Barbara of the silver screen appears as a youngster of twentysomething, author not only of America's first permanent wave but also of love in the bosom of her brother's West Point classmate, Cadet Trumbull. The Civil War interrupts their incipient idyll. Cadet Trumbull is a Northerner, the Frietchies being, it will be remembered, one of the finer families of slaveholding Frederick, Md. When the times comes for Barbara to say the historic "Shoot if you must this old grey head," her youth and the presence of Trumbull, now a badly wounded Union captain, suggest to her the variation: "Shoot and I'll thank you."

Florence Vidor as Barbara, Edmund Lowe as Cadet Trumbull, Lambert Hillyer as director have done passably, not impressively, with a grand historical possibility.

In Hollywood with Potash and Perlmutter is the single notable addition to the cinema gallery for the week. Addicts will recall the first Potash and Perlmutter film with considerable satisfaction. The second (derived from the play Business before Pleasure) is quite as entertaining. The four-star label on the billboards displays the names of Alexander Carr, George Sidney, Vera Gordon and Betty Blythe. When Abe takes to kicking the lion under the impression that it is a dog in disguise, there is really no point in anyone's retaining his gravity. The subtitles are even more diverting.

The City that Never Sleeps. This is a warning to modern mothers not to become bootleggers for the sake of the family income. The mother involved, widow of a saloon keeper, kept selling liquor even after 1919 to give her daughter the "advantages." Among the advantages in her Park Avenue existence the daughter found cocktails and a fortune hunter. When the latter began shooting at the police in the mother's downtown cabaret, the girl recalled the tableau long ago when her father was murdered in the old saloon. She recognized her mother and returned to her childhood sweetheart who had courted her from the top of a brewery wagon long ago. As routine picture entertainment, the film is a fair sample. In performance, Ricardo Cortez and Virginia Lee Corbin are conspicuous.

Lift's Greatest Game. The story deals mainly with baseball, past and present, and includes the sinking of the Titanic. The old ball player's son survives, returns after 20 years to pitch the Giants to victory in the World's Series, shames the father for deserting the family in 1904. Probably one of the ten worst pictures. The heroine even wears curls down her back.

The Red Lily. Principally about an Apache and a little lady of the streets. Apparently all Apaches finally involve themselves with ladies of the street. At least all stage and screen Apaches. They usually do it according to formula as did the Apache in The Red Lily. Since he is Ramon Novarro, there seems to be somewhat more excuse for it than usuaL