The New Pictures

The Latest from Paris is sold by two commercial travelers, both birdwitted. One is male, the other female. They meet on a train where the man in order to have the woman to himself cleans the observation car of passengers by referring to his recent case of the pox. Nothing happens, nothing matters beyond the fact that the salesman is Ralph Forbes, good looking, ineffectual, and the saleswoman is Norma Shearer, beautiful, wasted.

Soft Living is comedy, cosseted into diversion. Insignificant, happy, it sweeps along relating how pretty Madge Bellamy, shrewd secretary to a shrewd divorce lawyer, marries a millionaire lumberman. While the organist fingers, "O Promise Me," she figures the alimony. Knowing this, the young husband shows his virtuosity as a shrew-tamer. He takes her to a hunting lodge, turns soft living into hard, makes her tote wood, build fires, wash dishes, pose for him, behave herself. At last he drives figures out of the brain of the amateur gold digger. John Mack Brown is the successful husband of this successful picture.

The Leopard Lady. She trains the big cats. He is a first mate. Together they dissolve the mystery of an Austrian circus driven somewhat mad by a series of murders, a Cossack rider, and his evil ape. His repertory of crimes is violent, grotesque, allowing Actress Jacqueline Logan, the Leopard Lady, to dress in siren skirts, to act hysterically in a picture which is otherwise emotionally excellent.

The Streets of Shanghai. Not in years has a truckload of U. S. Marines dashed so madly over rough Chinese roads to save the honor of a pretty American missionary, lured to a mandarin's den. Heavy with leers, threats, murders and stabbings, the dolorous drama follows Pauline Starke as the girl who loves Marine Kenneth Harlan, who is in turn loved by wicked Margaret Livingston. Evil sticks up like potatoes in Irish stew. It is all excessively Chinese, silly.