The New Pictures

Laugh, Clown, Laugh. The time has now definitely arrived when only a very small and insensitive urchin will be so mean as to laugh at one of Ringling's Pierrots capering in the centre ring. Everyone else is aware that the spangled comedian has an unhappy love life, a severe case of pyorrhea, and an insatiable appetite for the flesh of the Australian wombat. Only the most agonized and pathetic courage enables him to smile and dance in the performance of his duties. This picture concerns a Grimaldi whose unhappy habit is to moan and wail whenever approached by an emotional crisis.

An emotional crisis occurs when he falls in love with his little ward, only to learn that she loves Luigi, nobleman. The clown refuses to accept the sacrifice of affection which is proffered him by his lady. Instead, he kills himself by sliding down a wire. "Laugh, Clown, Laugh," he cries before his suicide.

Despite the pathetic fallacy upon which this film is built, there is in it plenty of sentimental and .emotional appeal. Such sad scenes are shown as the one wherein the mournful mime requires of a doctor some remedy for his sorrow and is told to look upon the efforts of the finest clown in Rome--none other, as he glumly reflects, than himself. Lon Chaney goes off on a tear in the part of tragic Tito. While it puts some limit upon his metamorphic talent, he is able still to twist his face into many a contorted grin and to slobber frequently with sorrow. Laugh, Clown, Laugh is a trite picture and not a true one, but it succeeds surprisingly often in its lugubrious intentions.

His Tiger Lady. With Adolphe Menjou in the costume of a Rajah, well-nigh anything is rather more than likely to happen. He is not, however, a real Rajah; but only a "super" in a Parisian revue. He yearns for the haughty leading lady (Evelyn Brent) who keeps counts & dukes, likes to go to the zoo. She puts "Super" Menjou to her favorite test: he must enter a tiger's cage and rescue her silk gloves. Approaching the beast, he notes with pleasure that it had died the night before. He does the proper thing.

Fair farce.