The New Pictures

Mother Machree. William Fox has rediscovered that "Mother" is the sweetest word at the box office. A month ago he released Four Sons, maternal, Bavarian. This week, he released Mother Machree, an Irish valentine. It tells of Ellen (Belle Bennett), who hears in her little Ballymore cottage that her husband has been killed in a sea tornado. With Brian, her son, she starts for the U. S., meeting on the way Bozo (Victor McLaglen), a lanky giant, and his harpist brother. The giant loves Ellen, follows her. He joins a circus, and persuades her to be a sideshow freak also. Ellen gives Brian to a school teacher for adoption, and there the lachrymation bursts forth. Years afterward the mother is a friendly charwoman, finally a nurse in a wealthy family. A youth comes courting, confiding to the old nurse his love for her charge. Thus mother and son meet; padding back and forth in front of the aristocratic house is the lanky giant, now a policeman. War arrives; the giant takes the boy to war; they return, the young couple marry; and Mother Machree and Bozo do also. For no matter what happens this little group of abused Irish stick together to swell the jubilation at the box office.

The Smart Set. William Haines is always the play boy, the smart aleck--sometimes in baseball uniform (Slide, Kelly, Slide), sometimes in football paddings (Brown of Harvard), sometimes in the pants of a leather neck (Tell It To the Marines) or even dressed as a cadet (West Point). This time he is a polo grandstand player. Here Actor Haines, rich man's son. flirts with Constance Howard, presses undesired kisses on her, steals her slippers at a dance, throws his shoes in the soup at a Park Avenue dinner party, salts and eats the carnations. None the less, this objectionable young man has a mount on the U. S. polo team. In the last two minutes of the final chukker in the international match he knocks the winning goal, ending his baroque antics, closing a silly picture.

Finders Keepers. She was the godmother of the regiment, but the daughter of the regiment's Colonel. He was only a buck private. She flirted with the officers. He peeled potatoes for them. The pair loved. To reach him for a hurried marriage ceremony before the outfit sailed for France, she put her slim young legs into a soldier's uniform, but forgot the belt. When the pants slipped, the audience squealed. Doughboys may have shooting pains when they see the army scenes, but picture patrons will deem eye-worthy this implausible, happy comedy with Laura La Plante, pretty, funny, spontaneous as a sneeze.

If I Were Single. A sportive and decorative quartet of players make gay this comedy of a gentleman who picks yellow buttercups outside the marital fence. Ted (Conrad Nagel) and May (May McAvoy) were married only a year when a brunette (Myrna Loy) crinkled her eyes at him, and he temporarily forgot all vows. The brunette borrowed his cigaret lighter, a present from his wife, and May discovers all. Alarmed, she telephones a mauve musician (Andre Beranger) and the two slip under the lap robes of the car in which the philandering pair are taking a speedy moonlight, midnight drive.

That's My Daddy. Reginald Denny, smooth, silk-hatted bachelor about to be married, found himself the possessor of an orphan baby. Circumstances moved him to claim it unqualifiedly, nonchalantly, as his own. The reels henceforth revolve about the separation of the society wife from the embarrassing secret. This simple-minded tale was conceived by Mr. Denny who also occupies most of the footage with the exception of those portions devoted to Jane La Verne, 6, aspirant for Baby Peggy's bassinet. The hilarious title writer went off the deep end with "Popsy must be dood to Pudgy."

Feel My Pulse. A hypochondriacal heaven is this sanitarium wherein the stimulus of Bebe Daniels' legs accounts for much of the fun. Here she is a rich young woman in the act of escaping a woolly uncle. She rushes to a clinical island, and soon finds it a rum runners' base. There, Contrabandist William Powell cozens Bebe, and feeds her Bacardi until she becomes mellowed, raddled. Then everything is excitingly composed by a reporter, wise and handsome, who is completely alive to the gulling. Richard Arlen is the boy accelerator of the Bebe pulse.