The New Pictures

Red Hair. Raging cutely, Clara Bow, famed exponent of "It," pulled off gold-dug clothes, jumped into a lily pond, and rose to the surface with only a lily in her red hair. She was an amorous manicurist, clipping three elderly clients for clothes until she met the nephew of one, whereupon in a burst of reform and shame she took the climactic pond plunge. Elinor Glyn devised the diverting asininity.

We Americans. Here was a chance to make a cinema that would be as obnoxious as Abie's Irish Rose (play). But Producer Carl Laemmle forfeited the chance by the dexterity of his workmanship. He depicts Jews, Irishmen, Italians, Germans, Swedes, Russians mingling in a U. S. city in a plausible manner. The young people are restless, ill at ease, in the parental homes. Ma and Pa Levine (pants-presser) wonder why, until a neighbor asks them the question: "Isn't it possible that your daughter is justified in being ashamed of you? How many of you [parents] can read and write the English language?" So Ma and Pa go to night school. One day, when Ma is reciting the Gettysburg Address at home, she hears that her son had been killed in the World War while saving the life of Hugh Bradleigh, whose ancestors came over on the Mayflower. Then follows the logical cementing of the romance of Daughter Beth Levine and Hugh Bradleigh, happily avoiding the Jewish-Irish hookup. As Ma Levine, Beryl Mercer gave a grand performance.

Skinner's Big Idea. Three loyal dotards had to be fired. Skinner (Bryant Washburn), young, newly elected member of the firm had to discharge them as his first duty. Instead he imported a stenographer, peppy, once a showgirl (Martha Sleeper). Stimulated, the dotards grew chipper, chirrupy. One bought a toupee, all bought brassies. Skinner's big fresh idea results in the retention of dotards; in a picture feeble, mild as goose milk.

The Show Down. Two toughened adventurers annoyed and battled with each other all over the world until at last they clamped together in the heat and sog of the tropics. The cause of the final brawl is Evelyn Brent. In a sodden camp on a Latin American oil field, four men gaze hotly at her. One is George Bancroft, alternately brute & gentleman, star of this affair. He hulks, and moralizes, fights, and suffers to no profit.

The Count of Ten. Charles Ray is the bashful bruiser, the simple-minded boy who could lick the champion. James Gleason, here a cocky misogynist, is his manager. When the manager goes away, Actor Ray puts on a pink shirt, yellow gloves, a cane, and spats, marries. Instead of taking on the champion, he takes on expenses and a gambling brother-in-law. At last, for quick money he fights the champion with a broken hand, and is, of course, beaten up. His wife had given him the count of ten.