Evening Star Newspaper, July 14, 1929, Page 49

8 Theater, Screen and Music Part 4—14 Pages AMUSEMENT SECTION he Sunday Star WASHINGTON, D. C, SUNDAY MORNING, JULY 14, 1929.° DOLORES DELRIO and ROLAND DRENV— Columbis Photoplays SCREEN ATTRACTIONS OF THE WEEK. COLUMBIA—Dolores del Rio, in “Evangeline.” and evening. EAFLE—Richard Dix, in “The Wheel of Life.” and evening. FOX—Warner Baxter, in “Behind That Curtain.” This afternoon and evening. PALACE—Douglas MacLean, in “Divorce Made Easy.” afternoon 2nd cvening. METROPOLITAN—Sally O'Neil, afternoon and evening. COLUMBIA—*Evangeline.” 1 Dolores Del Rio, eminent as a screen star and one of the world's handsomest women, appears this week in person at Loew's Columbia four times daily in conjunction with her latest screen success, “Evangeline,” adapted from the famous poem by Longfellow. | Miss Del Rio, to make her first bow to the Washington public over the foot- lights of the Columbia Theater, brings | with her a wardrobe which cost $45.000 «and_at each performance will give the feminine fans an opportunity to see what the best-dressed women of the world wear. The picture “Evangeline” is a beau- tiful screen version of the famous classic, and is noted for its photog- | raphy, scenic splendor and the acting of an ‘excellent cast. The story is that of the Acadians, who, refusing to take | up arms against France, were dispersed by the English and sent to various parts of the New World. In the con- fusion of embarking Evangeline is | separated from her lover. He searches for her and she for him and, whil»| their paths cross at various times, she is never able to meet him until, as a sister of mercy, she finds him a broken | man in a hospital. There she sings for him agsin the love songs she sang | to him in their youth. It is here that | Miss Del Rio demonstrated her beau- | tiful singing voice. . Metro Movietone Acts, the Columbt: Concert Orehestra, the M-G-M New: the Fox Movietone News and usual | house features complete the bill. | EARLE—“The Wheel of Life.” Lively military scenes form the back- | ground of Richard Dix’s Paramount | picture, “The Wheel of Life,” which s now at the Earle Theater. The story opens in London, where | Dix, as a furloughed captain from a British military post in India, meets & | girl (Esther Ralston) with whom he | falls in love without knowing who she | is. Later he arrives at his Indian com- | mand, where he meets the girl again, | only to find that she is the wife of his commanding officer (O. P. Hegge). The romantic couple foreswear their ‘love and the captain gets a transfer | to Tibet, whence he is dispatched to | battle With native tribesmen who have | threatened a group of British travelers in a Lama monastery. The colonel’s wife proves to be one of the endan- gered travelers. The battle with the | tribesmen rages until reinforcements | arrive and save the day. The colonel heads the rescue troops. An amaszing climax is then réached in the tense, | gripping drama. Victor Schertzinger | directed the picture. The added features include s mnew | Paramount talking comedy, *“Moon- shine”; a novelty reel, “Marionettes,” and a new Vitaphone presentation of Harry Tate, England’s laughing fool, in | “The Patent Office.” FOX~—"Behind That Curtain.” “Behind That Curtain, a Fox Moxic- tone talking production, is the attrac- tion at the Fox this week. It is from | the novel of Earl Derr Biggers and lé‘ described as a drama of love and mys- tery. A profound secret develops in the beginning and is not disclosed untii | \the climax. \, The_Biggers novel is one of the kind ce reader does not lay ¥ias completed it. The ¢ the picture—which is interest until the end is £ plot introduces highly interestifig persons, including a famous explorer, a young wife, & cunning and courageous .operative of Scotland Yard and a certain evildoer against whose wiles the detective's wits are constantiy matched. A series of puzzling situations is woven in with the romance of the adventurous hero and the heroine. Peatured in the production are War- ner Baxter, Lois Moran, Gilbert Emery and Philip' Strange. The production was directed by Irving cummlnll,"u 4 On the stage a Midsummer revue feature ?!c'hn Irving Fisher, ! ceremonies; “the gorgeus Foxettes, “the Forty Fox Jazzmanians” and other | who sail on a boat to escape their par- This Week This afternoon This afternoon This in “On With the Show.” This dainty singer, held for a second week: ‘Wally Jackson, an eccentric comedian; the seven Red Devils, whirling acro- | bats, and Jack Rose. The Fox Movie- | tone’ News rounds out the program. PALACE—“Divorce Made Easy.” Douglas MacLean, Marie Prevost and | Johnny Arthur are featured at Loew’s | Palace for a week, beginning Saturday, | in the talking comedy “Divorce Made | Easy.” This s considered just the sort | of vehicle in which MacLean displays the happy faculty of making people | laugh. It provides humorous episodes, humorous “gags” and humorous dialogs, all funny in themselves, but vastly fun- nier in the hands of MacLean with his ever-ready smile. He has also a pleas- ant voice and knows how to use it effectively. The story is based on a scheme whereby a young married couple hope to secure a divorce in order to get a large part of the fortune of the maiden aunt of the husband. The husband obligingly consents to take part in the | project, offering his services &s co- respondent, but their plans go all awry | amid a flock of fast-flying and uproar- jously funny situations. On the stage Herbert Rawlinson, master of ceremonies, will be presented with the Palace Syncopators in a Boris Petroff production, *‘Honeymoon Cruise,” based on two pairs of elopers ents. Featured in the cast are Joe | Penner, a Washington favorite famed | for “Wanna Buy a Duck?"; Joe and Willle Hale, Luella Friertag, Billy| Myers, Babe Morris, Eugene Ramey, | the Honeymoon Trio and the Dorothy | Berke dancers, As a special attraction the Sonnen- rg - Lewis championship wrestling match will be presented with sound ef- fects and a description in dialogue by a competent wrestler. The Fox Movie- tone News, the M-G-M News, short| subjects, the Palace Orchestra and | Charles Gaige at the organ complete | the program. Announcement is made that “On With the Show,” the first of the talk- | ing, singing and dancing pictures in natural colors, will be held at Cran- dall's Metropolitan Theater for the second week. It is a Warner Bros, Vitaphone production the first of its kind, photographed by an en- tirely new color process, and there is not a single scene which is photographed in the old-fashioned way. With its music, dancing, songs, the gorgeous colors of its settings and cos- tumes, it is as if one were sitting in a theater seeing a musical comedy, with the added privilege of going backstage with the players, where the real comedy and drama of their lives take place. ‘The cast includes Sally O'Neil, Arthur Lake, Betty Compson, William Bake- well, Louise Fazenda, Sam Hardy, Joe E. Brown, Lee Moran, Harry Gribbon and Wheeler Oakman. It is based on a story by Humphrey Pearson and adapted by Robert Lord. Words and music are by Harry Akst and Grant Clarke, dance and stage presentations by Larry Ceballos, and it was directed by Alan Crosland. A new Vitaphone presentation, which features the child wonder, Baby Rose Marle, who sings several of the newest song hits, with thee latest issue of the Pathe Sound News will be added at- tractions. Two-Hour Vacation. 'WO hours is not & very long vaca- tion, but it was the exact length ' of the between-picture respite recently | salt water. A double water granted Kay Hammond, stay actress who is making her screen debut via talking pictures. A At 11 one l:-normnl Kay completed her role in Gloria Swanson’s current pro- et room for a two-hour nap before to another sound stage to.begin RALSTON and~ SCREE ® & e RICHARD Dix- Earle Motor, Aviation and Radio News LEE and DOUGLAS | —— T m— -I==.==: | emam— & o O, LUELLA FEIERTAG « | and BILLY MYERS - LOIS MORAN and WARNER BAXTER~Fox- Outdoor Amusements. GLEN ECHO PARK. Glen Echo Park in a shady glen of Maryland’s rolling hills, with breezes | aplenty, offers more than 50 amuse- ment devices to make thg hours speed on wings, sharpen the wits and pep one up for the next day’s work. The derby racer and coaster “dip stand unchal: lenged as thrillers, though -the air- plane swing, a novelty, has captured the fancy of the public, because it is almost a duplicate of a real plane, as it wings its way through space, with motors roaring and propellers swinging. Cool as a cave is the old mill, which must be traversed exclusively by boat, passing interesting scenery on the way. Popular with the children is the car- rousel, offering a fine ride to ‘tuneful melodies by a Wurtlizer organ installed this year. At the midway, every little device has a meaning all its own, and these with the skooter, whip and other devices guarantee fun to every one who passes the free gates of the park, day or_evening. In the ballroom the de luxe attrac- tion is McWilliams and his ore! MARSHALL HALL. To Marshall Hall, a beautiful. and historic spot on the Potomac River, opposite Mount Vernon, the steamer Charles Macalester makes three trips daily and Sunday, leaving the Seventh stréet whart daily at 10 a.m., 2:30 p.m. and 6:45 p.m., except that the Sunday morning trip is made at 10:30 o'tlock, Marshall Hall presents many fun and entertaining features, such as swings, skooter, rolled ter, etc. A popular feature this season free dancing in the pavilion.. . Pienic groves with tables and benches .are available for all day and evening family outings. R CHESAPEAKE BEACH. Chesapeake nearest salt water from the city heat in cool breezes from Chesapeake Beach and blthlnh\n the slide adds to the bathers' fun, and bathers may Ioll on the sand in the shade of big free gay-colored beach umbrelias. ‘The picnic groves, on & hill overlook- ing. the bay, are shady and cool and Longfellow’s Greatest. THE canny ingeniousness of me- chanical invention and the so-called spirit of American youth have unwit- tingly combined in the present day and generation to thrust the beauties and the art of literature well into the back- ground of what Grover Cleveland once called “innocuous desuetude.” (The pre- ceding sentence, by the way, is ended with & word that is properly. pronounced as if it were spelled “deswetude” and not “desoo-we-tude,” as many public akers persist in pronouncing it. But that's a digression.) The poét always has been a victim of a fate that alternates in praising his work and then in consigning it to outer darkness, like punning, as something utterly unworthy of consideration of the highbrow whose thoughts soar only into the ether of commercialism or politics, personal or partisan. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, whose poems have been secretly prized as among the dearest of life's treasures by many an American boy and girl in the past, belongs to the ranks of the de- spised poets, and, if he really knew it, he had cause to weep that some wise- acres declared that he wasn't even a poet. Perhaps the majority of his self- constituted judges have been ever con- fident that certainly he is not one of ithe great poets the world has. known. It is & sort of fashion in America—and has been for a long time—to decry things American, especially individual writers and thinkers, in the conviction that it might denote a superior culture, a more profoundly developed sense of intellectual discrimination. And Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who sang the “Song of Hiawatha” and the story of “Evangeline,” the former perhaps more familiar, due to its use in schools as & parsing ‘medium in the vain effort to achieve grammatical expression, rather | thian the desire to exploit its' symbolic beautles, may ar may not be a poet, de- pending upon the way you feel about it. But “Evangeline” has been by an ipse dixit almost as unassailable as that which bars poetry from the society of the learned, as a. prose story, not really a poem, and yet withal as “Longfellow’s greatest poem.” Be that as it may, there are thousands who love it for the beauty and the pathos of its story, and who know that Nathaniel Hawthorne, next perhaps u; ‘Washing- the|ton Irving, the story olered. e greatest of American authors, to whom the outline of the of the luckless Acadians - S8 decreed; | an_ American novel, not only approved and urged the use of the material as the foundation of a poem by Longfellow but when the Cambridge poet had com- pleted his immortal work declared it to be perhaps Longfellow’s greatest poem. ‘This being true, and because there are millions of Americans not of higher critical rank who “love Longfellow,” to employ a familiar term within the reach of even the modern youthful spirit of America, it ight be well to care- fully read the and something of its history befare going to see its artistic replica. upon the screen in ‘Washington this week. It is the very soul of poetry that shines in its every line, although in form it may be thought to be prose; and those who never trouble themselves as to whether a work is prose or poetry may find an exceedingly interesting and beautiful story as their reward. Its theme is the constancy of love, but of a love whose spirit and meaning is not a frequent topic for screen production, * Those who have fortunately seen the picture at advance shownigs seem to feel that the interesti Dolores del Rio is typically and peculiarly an ideal Evangeline. Signs German Writer. L!:O BIRINSKI, young German writer who has been responsible for several of the most striking and artistic European motion pictures and plays of the last five years, has been signed by Pathe to write original stories and dialogue for its new program of talking pictures. Birinski's best known picture in this country - was “Varlety,” ' which- first brought Emil Jannings and Lya De Putti to the attention' of American audiences. He wrote more than a score of successful German pictures, included among them being “The Tragedy of Lovi nings, and T} £ starring Jannings and . Conrad Veidt, both of which were loudly acclaimed at various “little theater” showings in this country. Birinski is also ‘the author of eight nlxucoacsml European stage plays, in- cluding . ‘was pre- ted ‘with Palace (Stage) e i Meén “Sound” Better. ‘ ARL DERR BIGGERS, whose | ™ cherubic, genial countenance would | never suggest that he writes the kind of shuddery thrillers which cause the perturbed reader to look under his bed before retiring, has become particularly | Interested in talking pictures of late | because Fox Pilm Corporation has pro: duced his mystery story, “Behind Tha Curtain,” as an audible film. | __And Mr. Biggers, who was invited to | Hollywood from his nearby home : | Pasadena, Calif., for story conferences, found on looking the “speakie” field over that what seems to be most needed audible screen drama. “There secem to be comparatively few women players so far,” said the play- wright novelist, “who have voices that record well in talking pictures. It's a curiosity that to date men seem to moenopolize the talent in this direction. “I presume it's because men, having voices of Jower register, sound better. Women'’s Voices are often pitched too high for talking pictures. The male actors all apnear to enunciate better than the women. Some of the women seem to have greater difficulty pro- nouncing ‘s’ so it won't be harsh, for it's the ‘s’ and not the ‘p's’ and ‘q’s, that a player in talking pictures has to mind because of its sibilant quality.” "Big Ben" in Talkie. ’m mellow chimes of Big Ben, his- ric clock tower of the British Parliament Building, have been brought across the sea for a part in Paramount’s picture “The Wheel of Life,” starring Richard Dix. The sound of the great bells was “photographed” in London by Para- mount news cameramen and sound ex- perts and then was sent to Hollywood for inclusion in the film, part of the action of which takes place on the banks of the Thames. It is an all- talking production, with Esther Ralston and O. P. Heggle in the leading sup- porting roles. Ancient Mor;astery Filmed. N exact-scale likeness of -the in- terior of the Sakya monastery of the lamas of the Buddhist faith in southern Tibet, “heart of the ‘world.” was built at the Paramount studios in Hollywood for Richard Dix's new talk- ing picture, “The Wheel of Life,” from the play by James Bernard Fagan. The Sakya monastery dates back to the first century of the Christian era, perhaps beyond. It was old when great Mongol leader Kublai Khan there became a convert to Buddhism in the latter part of the second century. Pagoda-like pillars carved from stone, & floor ‘of blocks qf ‘stone, long corri- dors; -hanging lamps that burn butter- fat, a jeweled figure of the Buddha en- throned on an ‘elaborately carved altar, and one huge solid -wall on which is painted the symbolic Buddhistic “wheel of life”” with its 8 cardinal sins, its 12 abstract causes of rebirth- and its 6 states of life, are the chief features of this carefully fashioned screen set- ting. v The plans are said to have been \drawn up from rare photographs in the possession of Maj. Fairbanks Smith, for 14 years with the British army in India and Tibet, who is now a techni- cal at Paramount’s He phs of iterior “of the believed to bs. now are good feminine voices for the| MELEAN- Palace SALLY ONEILL and ARTHUR LAKE-Metropoliten ON THE BROADWA STAGE A Review of Theatrical Affairs Along the White Way By Richard Watts, Jr. HE era of good feeling has, it is| gratify to learn, finally arrived in the New York theater. The spirit of comradeship in the in- terest of art, which idealists had long been hoping for as a substitute for the old cut-throat competition, is with | us, and even if it is the result of a fear of the encroaching cinema, it is pretty gratifying. Of course, Mr. Ziegfeld | still is a trifle annoyed with Mr. Car- | | roll, and Mr. Carroll in his turn con- | tinues to be a bit disappointed with | Mr. Ziegfeld: but the struggle doesn't | retain its old-time bite. | _In the current musical shows you will | find a pleasantly convincing demonstra- | tion of the new friendship. Eddie Can- | | tor, the Ziegfeld pride, graciously con- | sented to write the libretto for the lat- | est Carroll effort, and he can be en- | countered on the movietone each night | doing his best to brighten the prologue |of “The Sketch Book” with his shadow, even if his body is still in thrall to Ziegfeld. 1If, after witnessing this grati- fying sight, you had happened to drop | | up to the premiere of the master glori- | fler's “Show Girl,” you would have come | upon Al Jolson leaping from his_aisle | seat to sing a song that expressed his | amicability toward the latest effort of that rival producer, Mr. Ziegfeld. | Turning to the more serious drama, | you might lately have discerned the| robut Mr. Woods lending his favorite contract player, the dashing Miss Claudette Colbert, to that alien organi- | zatlon, the Theater Guild, while a seri- ous contemplation of the recent theater | programs would have revealed that each printed cast named at least one player | | who was appearing through the courtesy | f another manager. | loans were, it must be confessed, accom- | panied by a certain minor grumbling, | | but none of them fooled any one into | | the belief that the local entrepreneurs | were anything less than pals at heart. | _This gratifying but somewhat puzzling | sight of natural-born foes suddenly | transformed into pals was most charm- ing, but it has made some of us skeptics | & trifle suspicious. The alliances haven't | | seemed exactly natural, and we have |felt that there must be some other| | explanation besides the coming of the | millennfum. Then, after much pro- | found cogitation, the most obvious but | apparently the most logical solution burst in upon us. It is, of course, that despite their protestations of confidence the theater magnates haven't quite got over that possibly hysterical suspicion of the talking photoplav. The finest example extant of that | good old custom of whistling to keep | up one's courage is, you may have real- ized, the contention of the stage pro- ducers that the new cinema is a com- monplace medium of no varticular im- portance. Possibly picture audibility really isn't a danger to our stage, but it must be confessed that the two main reasons advanced against its menace by | the advocates of the theater aren’t | terribly impressive. The first is that all | the silent screen’s glamour and hero | worship will be destroyed by the creak- ing menace of speech, and the second |is that the new medium is too lacking in potentialities for the dramatization | of ideas to be important. Both charges | are pretty easy to controvert. It was in theory a rather plausible | contention of the old-school theater ad- | dicts that the popularity of the silent | cinema depended on the imaginative ' Most of these | its glamour that romantic screen admirers brought to their consideration of shadow heroes and heroines, and that as soon as mechanical voices were added these hierarchs of the picture play would seem so commonplace and bloodless that the most ardent of fans would rush away from them in disgust. The only trouble with this idea is that it hasn’t worked out in practice. Instead of shuddering at the newly discovered and frequently inexperi- enced voices of their film favorites, these advocates have given every evi- dence of being fascinated by them. On the whole, the talk of the established screen stars has proved so satisfactory that it is becoming harder and harder for the stage- interlopers to capture a hearing in a medium wherein they ex- | pected to prove expert. The old-school | cinema players have been so generally satisfactory that, according to rumor, |the Actors’ Equity Association, which | naturally thought that the new inven- tion gave its members an impressive entrance into the Hollywood drama, is in grave danger of suffering its first major reverse. Just as the idea that a talking Cinema meant a cinema robbed of its glamour proved too ungracious to the photoplay and its people, so has the theory that the stage has more values as a medium of ideas been too flatter- ing to the conventional theater. It is, of course, an axiom of dramatic crit- icism that the drama, of all the alleged forms of artistic expression, is the most barren and backward in ideas. Years after some important thought has reached currency in a novel, or even an editorial page, it shamelessly makes appearance in a play, striving as debonairly as possible to pose as some- thing recent. Even Shaw and Ibsen, who were probably the stage’s most ad- vanced vendors of illeas, were years behind their colleagues in other fields of expression, while Eugene O'Neill, who is reasonably cerebral as a dra- matist. is perhaps a decade and a half behind his competitors of the novel and essay. . This almost ghastly backwardness in ideational content is so shocking that the theater must depend for its prowess as a form of artistic expression on its liveliness, its vigor, its vividness and its general emotional power for its effects. Since it happens that the cinema, as well as the stage, possesses these values to an enormous extent, they apparently become equal in audience value, and the theater is forced to de- pend on the potential helps of flesh and blood for its success. When, how- ever, the possible stage superiority is equaled by the freedom of movement, the additional scope permitted the films, then it must be confessed that the ancient medium really possesses no in- herent audience superiority. It is by no means the contention of this sermon that the screen is superior or even equal to the stage, or that it is destined to overwhelm it as a dra- matic medium. In fact. it is its firm belief that the two are’ distinctive dra- matic forms that must be kept apart if either. is to flourish importantly. It is the conviction, though, that the theater is ridiculous if it believes that either 1ts proudly proclaimed flesh and blood quality or its boasted superiority in ideas is destined to provide it with vic- tory. It would be better advised if it depended on more sensible reasons for @ successful future. ¢¢RED hair, blue eyes, blonde curls, or slim figures do not hold the key to motion picture success.” ‘This is .the formal announcement from the Paramount publicity office. It adds: “Among the girls who have succeedzd in Hollywood are blondes and bruzettes, slim figures and plump ones, red heads and tow . Records of those who have made good reveal that the right amount of ambition, courage and per- serverance had more to do with their rise than the color combination of their hair and eyes, or their feminine figures. “At Paramount’s Hollywood studios there are 11 girls under contract as stars and featured players. All are beautiful, or more than ordinarily good looking. Yet not a single one came to her present position without a healthy number of reverses, but met by plenty of dogged s le in the face of dis- couragement.” B. P. Schulberg, general manager of West Coast productions, says this. Clara Bow was cut completely out of the first picture in which she appeared. She was utiful when she played that first screen role which resuited so dis- astrously, in fact she had just won a beauty contest at which such competent critics of pulchritude as Harrison Fisher, Neysa l(cuei’x‘al d::ld Howard Chandler l Christy were 3 beauty. What Wins Movie Fame? contest that she was given her initial screen opportunity in a picture called “Beyond the Rainbow.” When it was finished, Miss Bow invited all of her classmates to see the preview with her, Reel after reel went alonz and the beauty contest winner did not appear. The picture faded out after the final embrace and there had not been even a tiny glimpse of the future “It” girl. Hers had been one of the faces on the cutting room floor. That was a blow that would have “almost killed father,” as the old song runs—but Clara Bow just tossed her red-crowned head, blinked to keep the tears back while her friends ogered condolences, then everlastingly went to work. Her next experience was almost strenuous. For five weeks she was bruised emd battered in a rough and tumble part of a picture called “Down to the Sea in Ships.” She stuck grimly to her work in spite of sore muscles and the bitter memory of her previous ex- perience. When the picture finished— Clara’s role had “stolen” the produc- tion. And yet there were months of drudgery that brought little in the way of financial reward, and much in dis- couragement. But Clara “stuck,” and today it is sddchelmmurehnmummmy -othet. player in- Hollywoodh and