The New Pictures

The Silent Partner. It seems that in Leatrice Joy's pictures it would usually be better to paint out all the characters and scenery but herself. She is so thoroughly attractive that the rest, mattering not at all, should be blankness as well as silence.

The present program deals with the wolves of Wall Street, which Miss

Joy shoos away from her attractive, gambling husband. But she employs an old, old shoo: she saves money on the side. When the crash comes they depart to hatch a new life out of her nest egg.

The Green Goddess. George Bernard Shaw is reported"to have told William Archer (dean of the London critics and author of this melodrama), that he considered this the best motion picture plot he had ever heard. His opinion discloses the fallibility of genius. Despite extraordinarily able performance, beauty and detailed lavishness of settings, and masses of money the picture lodges below the popular pinnacles now occupied by The Covered Wagon and Little Old New York.

George Arliss impersonates, as he did in the stage version of two years ago, the Oxford-trained Rajah of Rukh. Into the Rajah's kingdom crash (in an airplane) two Englishmen and an English woman. Political friction, which obtains at the moment between the Rajah and the British rule in India, complicated by his sensibility of the woman's singular attractions, persuade the dignitary to sacrifice the males to the Green Goddess. The discovery of a wireless set in his palace and the subsequent arrival of British airplanes help to counteract his inhospitable intentions. The plot is well sustained and consistently exciting.

The picture serves to bring back to the screen Alice Joyce, after a two years' absence. For those to whom Alice Joyce can do no wrong her reappearance will be a signal for the burning of incense. To the rest she is just another good movie actress.

Drifting. This is another of those pictures on which the Chinese Government, if there is any at the moment, could write a note demanding $6,000,000 or a trainload of smoked salmon by way of reparation. It shows just how nasty the Chinese nature is when it sets about peddling opium through the agency of a beautiful young woman. Miss Priscilla Dean is the young woman. She will probably peddle the picture, dope and all, around the country with considerable success.

The Midnight Alarm. Truly life according to the movies is real and very earnest. The little girl involved in these adventures is orphaned, loved by a fireman, hated by a stockbroker, locked in the broker's office safe while the office building burns, saved by the fireman with an acetylene torch.

Ten years ago the picture would have knocked a million dollars on the head and dragged it into the Vitagraph offices.

Marriage Morals. This sorry effort might better have been named The Shop Girl's Choice. Mary (Ann Forrest), who works in a shop, meets wealthy Harry Ryan (Tom Moore) who falls instantly in love with her and marries her in almost no time at all. Harry has a private bar in his home and a tall skinny friend and a plethoric friend who help him put down his liquor. There is also a former lover of Mary who used to wait for her in the snow and slush outside the shop. In conclusion Mary decides that it is more fun to be rich and worried than poor and bored.