The New Pictures

Synthetic Sin. Colleen Moore is a competent comedienne and the idea of this picture (a small town beauty who, told that she will never be a great actress until she suffers, goes to the city to sin) has possibilities, but somehow or other neither Miss Moore's talent nor the plot is used to much advantage. There are times when both the story and the actress wink and twitch like someone about to do something really funny, but the moment always slips away, the wit is not managed, and what is left remains small-town fooling. Best shot: Miss Moore practicing expressions before the mirror in a slot-machine.

West of Zanzibar. Lon Chancy, as a masked voodoo witch man impressing an African tribe with small-time vaudeville tricks, is no handsomer than usual. Chancy, with paralyzed legs, crawls on his hands or pushes himself in a wheelchair. Never believable, the plot involves a number of scenes in which Chancy, Mary Nolan and Lionel Barrymore act with the naivete, but without the conviction, of a high-school class in the Commencement play.

The Awakening. Vilma Banky, without Ronald Colman, but helped by good photography and Louis Wolheim's battered face, makes fairly acceptable a story based on suspected, but not real unchastity, with a happy ending made possible by the self-sacrifice of a villain.

Best shot: Miss Banky trimming her grandfather's beard.

Vilma Banky's real name is Banky Vilma. She was born in Nagydorog, Hungary, and has a sister named Gizi. She had been making pictures for European companies when Samuel Goldwyn saw her picture in a photographer's showcase in Budapest. The people she worked for didn't want her to meet Goldwyn and kept her out of his way. He was about to get on a train when her manager ran up, seized the magnate's arm, urged him back to where the actress, her beautiful face expressing suspense, was standing in the drafty waiting-room. In Hollywood, Miss Banky played first with Ronald Colman, then with Rudolph Valentino, then again with Colman, always with Colman so that her "public" was shocked and even lessened when, a year and a half ago, in the most pompous and expensive wedding ever arranged in Hollywood, she was married to Rod La Rocque. The Shopworn Angel is the silly title of a sophisticated and entertaining story about a Texas rookie who is always being kidded because he has no nerve with girls. When a Manhattan policeman stops a Rolls-Royce and tells the chauffeur to take the soldier to the ferry, the Texan, in the tonneau, finds that his big feet encounter the slippers of an attractive showgirl. He brags to his friends about his date and writes for the girl's picture which he pins over his bunk. The complications resulting from his bluff are worked out so skillfully and with so little sentimentality that the people seem real and the situation funny and convincing at the same time ; that the end, confused by an unnecessary sound-sequence, is devoid of kisses, should not spoil this smart picture for the box office. Best shot: the Texan (Gary Cooper) drinking a chocolate ice-cream soda.