The New Pictures

Plastered in Paris. Guffaws will grow among those people who pronounce it "moom pitcher," who view this bad piece about a kleptomaniac ex-soldier at the American Legion convention in Paris. The star is Sammy Cohen, cast as Samuel Nosenbloom.

Excess Baggage. Among cinemaddicts there is a tendency to confuse their aversion to a character with their critical judgment of the actor's exposition. Particularly is this true in the case of William Haines. This cinemactor invariably plays the obnoxious, precocious whiffet who upsets plans, causes heartaches by his wilfulness. In this piece he is the smartaleck vaudevillager whose wife becomes a famed cinemactress while he is left in comparative obscurity. He wins her back from a sleek cinemactor (Ricardo Cortez) after slap-stickery and problem-solving.

Danger Street. The jilted "clubman" cannot honorably take his own life, but a distorted sense of honor permits him to meddle in the affairs of a gang-governed district, hoping always that a gangster's bullet will end it all. A second love comes into the meddling clubman's life, but the girl (Martha Sleeper), a luncheon cashier, lists not to the mating song of the clubman when she learns he has been balked by another. Warner Baxter, able actor, is unable to escape the boundaries of a bad script.

Beggars of Life. This story of Jim Tully's concerns hoboes. It opens with a murder. A lecherous farmer took Nancy (Louise Brooks) out of an orphanage. For two years he had "pawed over her with his hands." Finally at breakfast one day he attempted to rape her, but she pulled a shotgun from the wall, slew the farmer, protected her honor. She is assisted in her getaway by a casual young hobo (Richard Arlen) who, cinemaddicts are to believe, persevered in a platonic companionship. At a jungle (hobo hangout) her sex is discovered when the Arkansaw Snake (Robert Perry) recognizes the contour of her hips, despite her masculine attire, her cropped hair. But Oklahoma Red (Wallace Beery) is a vagabond whose rules are: when he is with a gang, it is his gang; if a girl is in the gang, she is his girl. Hopping a freight with the gang to elude hawkshaws who were after Murderess Nancy, Oklahoma Red holds informal court, sentences Nancy's young hobo to be thrown off the train. The discovery of the hawkshaws on the train postpones execution of the sentence. Red uncouples the car in which the hoboes are riding and temporarily foils the hawkshaws. He continues to attempt to take Nancy until the realization is driven into his consciousness that she loves her young hobo, none other. As wholeheartedly as he desired the girl for himself, Red is converted to helping Nancy to free enjoyment of Nancy's fancy. The rest of this active picture exposes his methods.

Here is a realistic reel. The hobo types might easily have been friends of onetime-hobo Tully on the road. Wallace Beery,* who can put more lasciviousness into the simultaneous lifting of eyebrow and stroking of whiskers than most cinemactors can in 500 feet of ponderous leering, has been permitted to graduate from the oaf class into the wider world of characterization. Louise Brooks, as usual, is decorative, never decorous. Richard Arlen does honestly the flaming-tempered youth.

Mother Knows Best. Edna Ferber's story, reputedly niched from the life of Elsie Janis, legitimactress, is borrowed by this piece. It concerns the cautiously ambitious woman whose life is a campaign to make her daughter a famed mimer. Ma Quail (Louise Dresser) tells daughter Sally (Madge Bellamy) that a variety singer, with whom she had fallen in love, has been killed at the front. As he must in all cinemas, the hero lives. Again Louise Dresser, the perennial mother, earns her reputation for reliable expositions; curiously apt is Madge Bellamy as Sally--curiously apt because in the past Miss Bellamy has acted like a caricature of an actress in the midst of the emotion of the moment.

The Docks of New York. He who mingles much with men whose biceps earn their bread and beer, knows the Bill Roberts (George Bancroft) of this piece. Bill Roberts is a stoker on a tramp steamer; he can lick anybody, is so much a creature of whim that he is incongruously whimsical, an animal whose life is single-fettered by a fetish-like rule, that of never missing his boat. Bill Roberts' boat puts in at an East River dock in Manhattan for one fog-shot night. Walking along the dock, Bill Roberts sees two feminine hands just above the murky waters of the river, instinctively clutching at a straw. Swashbuckling Bill drags at his cigaret, drops into the water and rescues the girl, takes her to a seamen's bordello. A hot toddy warms Sadie (Betty Compson) and Bill breaks open a clothing store to get her some dry clothes; picks a tinselly thing that fits her as closely as her water-soaked garments. In the course of the evening's lark they marry.

Bill leaves the next morning with no intention of ever again seeing Mrs. Roberts. Bill's third engineer ogles Sadie, goes to her room when Bill has departed for his ship, is shot in the back by Lou (Baklanova), his wife, who had befriended Sadie. Once again in the black gang (nautical name for stokers) Bill quarrels before Quarantine with the third engineer's successor, goes above and dives into the water. He swims ashore and arrives at Night Court in time to save his wife from a sentence of receiving the goods which he had stolen. When Bill takes the sentence of 60 days, he asks Sadie if she will wait for him. Says Sadie: "I guess I'd wait forever, Bill." The piece is recommended.

*Wallace Beery, ever loutish-looking, one-time husband of Marquise de la Falaise de la Coudray (Cinemactress Gloria Swanson), has a brother Noah Beery, ever fierce-looking, who never plays the fool. Even the early efforts of Wallace were buffoonish; he did a series of cinemas as a Swedish maid. With Raymond Hatton, Wallace was co-starred in a series of ludicrous funnies (We're in the Navy Now; Fireman, Save My Child; Now We're in the Air). Both Beerys were born on a western Missouri farm, were educated in Kansas City. Wallace is 73 inches high, weighs 235 pounds.