The New Pictures

The Man from Blankley's (Warner). By the same mental process which makes even the feeblest joke sound funny when whispered in church, the sight of a tragedian and screen romanticist as eminent as John Barrymore trying, at a dinner party, to cut a rubber squab which squirts out gravy and squeaks, is more hilarious than the same scene would be if a recognized clowner were playing it. But there are other reasons why The Man from Blankley's is unusual comedy. Its plot concerns an inebriated lord who, due to his condition and the heavy fog, arrives at the wrong house for dinner and is mistaken for a hired guest whom the hostess has ordered from an agency. The dialog is witty, and Barrymore, hiccupping slightly, plays through one lunatic scene after another with a charmingly satirical manner. He used to play in things like this long ago, at the beginning of a career which up to that time had made it seem more likely that he would turn out a public charge than one of the famed Hamlets of his time. His manipulation of seltzer bottles and irresponsible lines has the gusto of reviving memories--a salute to Youth. Best shot: Barrymore describing the habits of the Scarab.

Maurice Barrymore paid his son John's tuition at the Art Student's League, Manhattan, because John showed no talent for the family profession of acting, wanted instead to" be an artist. He went to the Art Student's League only once and worried about what his father would say when he heard about it. Maurice Barrymore said: "I can't understand how you happened to go once." When he made his first stage appearance as Max in a Chicago performance of Magda he was mentioned by one reviewer who said: "Barrymore walked about the stage as if he had been all dressed up and then forgotten." Considering himself a histrionic failure, he became a newspaper artist. Editor Arthur Brisbane fired him from the New York Evening Journal. Whenever he was out of a job he sent telegrams to his sister Ethel asking for money. Another source of income in bad times was his friendship with Frank Butler, a newspaper reporter who had a detachable gold tooth that could be pawned for 70-c-. Barrymore and Butler often drank up the 70-c-.

He was in San Francisco waiting to sail for Australia with Willie Collier and a road company of The Dictator when the 1906 earthquake occurred. Having spent the previous night away from home unexpectedly, he had nothing to put on but a full dress suit. In the bewildered, terrified crowds in the street he met Enrico Caruso and Diamond Jim Brady. They took back to New York the story that Barrymore had "dressed" for the earth quake. The commander of a local U. S. Army post recruited him to boss a gang of men in reconstruction work. He wrote home a harrowing account of his experiences, asking for funds. When asked if he believed the story, his uncle John Drew said: "I believe every word of it. It took a convulsion of Nature to make him get up, and the U. S. Army to make him go to work." As his success grew, he took acting more seriously. He played Hamlet successfully in England in spite of unfavorable comment from George Bernard Shaw. For a long time he had alternated cinemas with his plays. Four years ago he went to Holly wood permanently. He takes pleasure in insulting film magnates and commenting mockingly on their methods. Cast in The Sea Beast, made from Herman Melville's Moby Dick, he said: "Hollywood will have to invent a love-interest. Should I fall in love with the whale?" Dolores Costello was cast with him. He married her. He often forgets to shave, has worn the same hat ever since arriving in Hollywood, has his clothes sent from London. His best pictures were Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Beau Brummel. Mammy (Warner). It is strange but inescapably true that Al Jolson can sometimes make his kind of song--intrinsically tawdry though it is--sound like a folktune a thousand years old and that he can be funny as well as sentimental. Mammy is as silly as most other Jolson pictures. Irving Berlin, who wrote the tunes, wrote the story too--a backstage triangle with a "mother angle" thrown in to key up the sentiment. Jolson does a drunk scene and sings many times. The tunes are better than some of Berlin's, but not so good as the old favorites Jolson sings again: "Who Paid the Rent for Mrs. Rip Van Winkle?" "The Albany Night Boat," and an even older one, shuffled to by thousands of dancing feet, planged from the banjo hearts of ten thousand nickelodeons-- ''Pretty Baby." Most expected shot: Jolson enveloped in the arms of his mother (Louise Dresser) on a station platform.

Hell Harbor (United Artists). Jean Hersholt, the cinema's foremost exponent of a new, modern kind of villainy, a villainy with depth, individuality and something understandable and human about it, is here a German brigand who makes a good living buying and selling the produce of an obscure island in the Caribbean Sea. Among his current deals is one, negotiated with the lady's father, for possession of Lupe Velez. Like Hersholt, Miss Velez has a specialty in her acting: she is a professional Latin spitfire. Director Henry King, whose specialty is the reproduction of romantic and dangerous backgrounds, has done well with the photography, making the story look a little different as it follows its familiar outlines. John Holland is the gallant American adventurer. Best sound-shot: the stumping, sinister footsteps of a man with a pegleg.

Young Eagles (Paramount). Whatever merit there is in this picture is due to the nerve and Smartness of a man whose name is not mentioned in the cast--Dick Grace, who doubles for Charles ("Buddy") Rogers in the air scenes. Grace, who has doubled for stars in dangerous moments of many cinemas, who has broken 69 bones including neck and back, is an aviator so expert that he contracts to smash up planes at specified distances, usually only a few yards, from the grinding cameras (TIME, Nov. 11).

Young Eagles may be Grace's last doubling job. His contract called for several smashups and some difficult stunting in an air-battle. Most doubles die on the lot, and Grace, feeling that he has tested his luck pretty thoroughly, has told friends he will probably quit now. It is a trivial picture, a standard program air-feature about the chivalrous rivalry of a German and an Allied aviator. Rogers manipulates his long eyelashes successfully and the cameraman and doubles who risked their lives in the later sequences were not seriously hurt. Typical shot: international spies stealing Rogers' clothes after he has been drugged at a party in Paris.

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