I'

F Basil Syd-
and

ney
Mary Ellis

ever get around to taking their new production, the much-talkedof "Twelve Thousand," by Bruno Frank, to Chicago, they will present Mayor Thompson, and all those engaged in rewriting history and glorifying racial strains,

with a very pretty problem.

For Mr. Frank places his play during the American Revolution, but chooses for its setting a summer pavilion in the gardens of a German ducal palace. In this pavilion takes place the infamous bargain whereby twelve thousand Hessians at least we suppose they were Hessians are sold like cattle to the British crown for use by King George III and Lord North for the prosecution of their war against the rebels of America. Most intimately concerned with this transaction, according to Mr. Frank's tale, at least, are a certain Prince, his mistress, and their secretary, Piderit, peasant by birth and aristocrat by profession. The plot is simple, for the lady is not only expensive in her tastes, and wishes such costly things as necklaces and pretty clothes, but even has set her heart on acquiring a hairdresser from Berlin, recently arrived from Paris, and possessing to an extraordinary degree the art of making up fine ladies' hair. This item alone will come to thirty thousand thalers-an expenditure which, in view of an approaching ball, seems to the lady extremely necessary, but which gives the onlooker a very fair idea of how expensive the lady is to her Prince.

Now the most salable things which the Prince possesses are his subjects, twelve thousand of whom he can sell, sufficiently equipped, to the agent of the British Parliament. The peasant soldiers will be drawn by lot, the money will be paid by the British upon delivery, and all the whims and fancies of the lady can be easily gratified.

All these things are already afoot when the play opens. And all would be very well except for the fact that the secretary happens to have two brothers,

still peasants, who are included in the draft to be sold for the American war. To sell his brothers to military slavery and death is a little too thick even for the pseudo-aristocrat secretary. And so, since he possesses the courtesan's ring, in order to send her secret message to Berlin for the hairdresser, he uses its seal to send a message to Frederick of Prussia, disclosing the infamous bargain which is taking place, and thus, invoking that powerful sovereign's interference, tries to save his own brothers from disaster.

The play that results is polite and romantic, contains much good dialogue, and many interesting, even dramatic, moments. For upon the arrival of the Prussian envoy, the secretary's treachery to his Prince is discovered, and he seems likely to meet the fate meted out to traitors in that beatiful principality-broken on the wheel and then. beheaded. The fact that he escapes this fate is due, of course-but it is better to see the play to find that out!

Suffice to say that it is a good romantic yarn, and if made into a movie, with Emil Jannings in the leading part, might be exceedingly effective. The fact that as played by Basil Sydney and Mary Ellis it is only fair is perhaps no criticism of the playwright. Miss Ellis comes closer to realizing her rôle than does Mr. Sydney, but neither of them is ideally cast. In their hands the play is one of those eighteenth-century paintings come to life-fair to look at, mildly entertaining, but never stirring to the blood.

The point, however, that will raise a difficulty for Mayor Thompson, and all people who hold his point of view, is the fact that throughout the play the envoy of the British Parliament appears to be

99

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a most honest gentleman, who despises the German Prince for selling his subjects, who is more concerned over the comfort and fate of the Hessians than their sovereign is, and who, in the end, is willing to throw up the entire bargain rather than accede to the infamous additions to the contract which the Prince wishes to insert, in order to prevent any serious trouble resulting from wounded or crippled men who may return from America to his pleasant principality. In fact, morally, the heroes of the play appear to be the British envoy and the British Parliament; while the villainy is equally distributed over the Germans of various station, with the exception of the unfortunate peasants, who are dragooned into fighting in a foreign. country for a cause of which they know nothing.

Mr. Frank, we presume, is making no attempt in his play merely to present correct definite facts of history; yet the underlying drama is based on truth, and not only interests the spectator, but brings vividly to life again days long past. Constructed a little better, and played with greater emotional strength, we can see that it might be made into a magnificent play. But as it is, the Garrick players can't quite do justice to it, and the play itself contains several serious faults-notably, a complete lack of any emotional tie between any of the characters, with the exception of the secretary and his two brothers. Even in this instance the thing is not sufficiently established to appeal to the audience-although, of course, this may be due to the translation, which makes the peasant brothers speak precisely the sort of wooden dialogue which Ibsen's minor characters get off in our English versions. So that somehow even they do not completely enlist the audience's sympathies.

The result is a fairly interesting play, with moments of romance, humor, and some dramatic power. But we would just as soon read it as see it.

FRANCIS R. BELLAMY.

T

"Love"

HE current week having been one of numerous "hold-overs," this space may legitimately be given over to discussion of a picture which has not before been noticed here, although it has been on view for several months. The picture is "Love," and in it John Gilbert and Greta Garbo are co-starred with the most satisfying results.

The story of "Love" is an adaptation of "Anna Karenina," and not only did it impress us as a wise and faithful transcription of that towering work, it even succeeded in lending point and dignity to its own title. If you remember the grim idyll of Anna and Vronsky, you will perhaps be of a mind to admit that "Love" is far from being a bad title for it. After all, Vronsky's threatened ejection from his regiment and Anna's affair with an onrushing locomotive were directly traceable to the biological urge, and nothing else.

Edmund Goulding directed "Love," and did it with taste and discernment. Admitting that we, personally, know nothing of the visual aspects of Russian life except what we've learned from the screen, we still contend that the picture has an atmosphere which fits its Slavic story to perfection, and that is, to say the least, something.

An admirably unsympathetic performance by Brandon Hurst as Karenin and the uncanny acting of little Philippe de Lacy are other matters which must be

The Movies

By A. M. SHERWOOD, Jr.

henceforward or else his successor should be chosen from among those who've had the opportunity of seeing how it was done.

We had almost forgotten about John Gilbert, but, as we remember it, he was

fine. What with the fact that he wears snappy uniforms and flashes his eyes and teeth as arrestingly as usual, the charming ranks of his admirers will no doubt be substantially added to as a result of his showing in "Love." But for us the final dictum must be: If you are interested in seeing the most beautiful woman in the world doing a fine piece of acting in a really interesting film, Greta Garbo in "Love" is your recommended destination.

Emil Jannings in "Tartuffe the Hypocrite

HIS German picture, directed by F.

the main event; as distant bugles faintly sounding the coming of the queen; as dancing maidens strewing blooms before the fairest of all creation-and that'll be quite enough of that, and we ask your pardon. We get that way about Greta Garbo-we can't help it.

In "Love" the Sorceress of the Silver Screen is given the best breaks she has had since coming to Hollywood. Until you've seen Greta Garbo do Anna Karenina you've seen nothing. Bring on your Duses, say we, your Lina Cavalieris, Maxine Elliotts, Marilyn Millers, Janet Gaynors, and Mary Astors-none of them has equaled her for sheer physical allure and few of them have been half as accomplished artists. The élan, the quiet dignity of her performance in "Love" are matchless. Either Mr. Goulding ought to direct Miss Garbo

and "The Last Laugh"), is having a revival just now, and we review it for the reasons given elsewhere on this page.

Just when it was made we do not know; but a lot of present-day productions could be safely patterned after it in more respects than one. Dr. Murnau has so many virtues as a director, and Jannings as an actor, that it would be no easy task to point to any one outstanding capability in either. Our own view is that Murnau is the greatest living expert on scene-lighting and that Jannings does frightfully unpleasant characters better than he does anything else. "Tartuffe the Hypocrite" is so beautifully lighted that old Lux himself seems actually to be a member of the cast; and if there be any spectator who feels that some other actor than Jannings could

have made Tartuffe more chillingly horrible, he should become a casting director.

A very handsome and capable young lady named Lil Dagover appears in this absorbing little film study and plays the part of Mme. Elmire, who accomplishes by her intuition (and highly pleasing physique) the ultimate downfall of Tartuffe. She is convinced that her husband's blind adherence to the monkish impostor can be upset only by a demonstration of Tartuffe's real character. She achieves this by kidding Tartuffe into the notion that she is in love with his saintly nature, and finally overcomes his cunning reluctance sufficiently to get him into her personal bedchamber. Here he gives himself completely away, and the husband is summoned by an old retainer to view the proceedings through the keyhole.

He sees his attractive wife in (more or less) deshabille, and he sees Tartuffe putting on a most horrifying exhibition of nuzzling and guzzling; and, if you get the opportunity to take in this fragmentary masterpiece, we advise you to see it, too.

Adolphe Menjou in "A Night of Mystery

TH

HERE are some things one would much rather leave unsaid but which, for purposes of the record, must be said: for instance-Adolphe Menjou is beginning to look very old. He should do something to overcome the fallenaway look which has appeared in his once masklike face, or he won't be able to create the same illusion of inscrutable sophistication which has marked his every past performance.

This would be a pity; in fact, it is a pity, for Mr. Menjou's latest picture is far less acceptable than it would have been a year ago. It is a better-thanaverage film, although its ending is pretty unconvincing and its components nearly all stereotyped: the gallant officer, the lovely girl whose weak brother is unjustly accused of murder; the judge's wife who exacts silence to conceal her own indiscretions with the officer-you know how they go.

A striking girl named Nora Lane (to us previously unknown) has the rather small part of the heroine; our guess is that she will be heard from.

T

HERE were no neighbors near the old Lewis farm, and the children grew up in a little world of their own-a lovely world in the Blue Ridge hills of South Carolina overlooking the Seneca River, rich with Indian lore and Indian relics. Little Mary and her brothers and sisters hunted arrowheads, dug for Indian graves, built forts, made tepees of cornstalks, and dyed their faces with pokeberry juice, playing over and over the dramas of bygone warriors and their

squaws.

A quarrel always arose over the rôle of Catechee, their favorite heroine, who had saved the settlers from her own people, naming all the neighborhood streams on her historic ride. Whenever Mary was the lucky child to accompany Mother on her infrequent trips to the next village, she always paused over the muddy stream known as Eighteen-Mile Creek, asking with a delighted shiver: "That's where Catechee rode right through the water, isn't it?" And once more Mother would have to tell the old legend as she had heard it in her childhood.

A Tale for Children

By HARRIET EAGER DAVIS1 Illustrated by Frank W. Peers

straight black hair and reddish-brown skin that reminded them of the cruel savages who had killed so many of their fathers and brothers, but little Catechee was so shy and so sweet-natured, and so skillful at running and riding and arrowshooting, outdistancing even the boys, that they soon grew to love her as one of themselves.

Every one thought the little girl had forgotten her own people, yet as she grew older her playmates often caught a strange sadness in her big dark eyes, and one day, during an Indian raid, she disappeared.

The children were broken-hearted. "Ungrateful Catechee," said their elders, "after all we have done for her! It is the call of the wild-she has gone back to her own people."

But the children could not believe evil of their playmate; for a long time they missed her sadly, with her quick ways and her sweet nature, but all too soon playtime passed into the life of grownup burdens, and little Catechee became only a memory.

As time went on, the Indians seemed to grow less hostile; for three years there had been no attack, and the settlers began to build log cabins and cultivate land farther and farther from away the fort, growing more careless about guarding their settlement.

Meantime, many miles away, deep in

1 The stories in this department are the favorite tales of various families which have been handed down to each succeeding younger generation. The Outlook will be glad to receive and to pay for any such stories which our readers remember from their own childhood and which are found available. They should be told as simply as possible in the language one would use in talking to a child. We should also be glad of suggestions from older and younger readers as to well-known people whom they would be especially interested to have Mrs. Davis interview for stories remembered from childhood.

an Indian mountain village, where her people had taken her, Catechee had grown into a beautiful maiden, so lovely that one of the boldest and fiercest of the young warriors began to woo her to become his bride. But, though he was strong and handsome, Catechee could not return his love, for he hated the white settlers and often boasted how some day, when the Chief's plans were complete, Fort Star would be surprised and everybody killed-men, women, and children.

Catechee remembered her kind fosterparents and her little playmates, and, though she knew that her penalty from her own people would be death, she determined to save her old friends. Cleverly she questioned her lover about the route to the Fort, which, of course, she had long since forgotten, and every evening she crept to the tent of the warriors and listened to their powwow. One night, when spring floods had run their course and the boiling streams returned to their banks, the Chief announced that the time was ripe for the attack, and bade all to be in readiness at daybreak. With a whoop that curdled Catechee's blood, the warriors answered and began building a great fire for their wardance.

So, while her people leaped and screamed by the red glow of the fire, Catechee mounted the swiftest and strongest of the ponies and slipped away, bareback, into the dark forest. Somewhere to the south, all unaware of their danger, slept her paleface friends. She must find them, though all she knew of the way were the bits of knowledge picked up from her warrior lover.

Silently and lightly Catechee and her pony winged their way through the black and pathless woods until they were halted by a broad, rushing stream, but (Please turn to continuation, page 40)

W

E have in our time made a lot of fun of people who said, "I don't know much about art, but I know what I like." But after observing a number of people who know a lot about art and don't like anything, we think we prefer the former group. When a member of it begins to learn about art, you may be pretty sure that his last state is going to be worse than his first. For the average person who isn't willing to trust-with, of course, certain reservations-to his own preferences, too much knowledge about art is likely to bring an uncertainty which will spoil most of his pleasure in beauty. The more he knows, the less he will be sure what is good. He will be afraid of expressing an opinion, even to himself. He will become critical instead of appreciative-for him there will be no giants any more-and that state of mind, in viewing any field, marks the death of real pleasure.

There is, of course, a satisfaction in demolishing, in picking flaws. It gives a grand kick to your ego to find out where Rembrandt missed a finesse that would have given him two more tricks. But you'd get more pleasure out of the work if you never realized that he'd made a mistake.

This department, you see, is only justifying its lack of knowledge in matters artistic. The view expressed above is therefore neither entirely disinterested nor as you will have gathered-entirely sincere. Yet there is a certain amount of truth in it. We believe you would rather have us tell you about the things we like than to give you an expert criticism of something that perhaps isn't very good. We shall therefore be appreciative rather than critical.

LOREN STOUT

If we like a thing, we shall tell you about it, whether we are sure we understand it or not.

And another thing. We shall try to describe the kind of pictures that you will want to buy to hang on your own walls, not necessarily the kind you would buy if you were making a collection for your local museum. A slight thing, an unimportant thing, might be very important for you, might appeal to you personally, whereas having no particular artistic value in the larger sense, and no wide appeal, it would be totally unsuitable in a public gallery.

Of course, we don't hold much ourself with public galleries and museums, and educating the public to appreciate art, and so on. For two reasons. One is that almost no work of art looks well in close juxtaposition to another work of art. Your eye can't jump immediately from one fine thing to another fine thing and appreciate either. Even if it could, it doesn't get a chance. The wall of a gallery is a jumble of colors. You can't get the full force of the Hottentot maiden under the banyan tree with a snow-tipped Alp intruding on the outer corner of your left eye and a heap of overripe or jaundiced vegetables intruding on the outer corner of your right

eye. Ideas as well as colors and lines and masses clash and confuse you.

The second reason is that in a gallery there's always self-consciousness on the human side. A picture should be looked at in solitude. Get three people in a gallery, and they really forget all about the pictures. They either make wisecracks or else try to impress one another with their knowledge. We're willing to bet that when you go to an art exhibit less than ten per cent of your mind is

really occupied with the pictures. It's so with us. We think: "I like that picture.

At least, I guess I ought to. I wonder what I can say about it that will sound intelligent enough so that Cousin Mary won't think I'm a fool. I think that woman in the brown hat is listening to us. The man with the ribbon on his glasses is probably an art critic. I wish my feet didn't hurt." And so on.

Well, we went to a gallery yesterday. We were much embarrassed, because there was a tea party under way, and people were standing around with teacups in their hands eating sandwiches and talking art. It fascinated us for a few minutes. They'd take in a little sandwich, and then give out a little art. It was very uplifting. But nobody offered us anything, so we broke through the tea barrage and got off in a room by ourself, far from the clatter of teeth and the clash of cutlery, and there we found some water-oils by Charles S. Chapman which we liked.

This is the way he does 'em. On the surface of a tank of water he floats oil colors. These he stirs up gently until he gets an interesting design. He has developed a technique by which he can keep the line between two colors from blurring, and by which also he can do a good deal of drawing. Then he drops a sheet of paper on the water. This picks up the colors, and he can then go on and develop them with water-colors to any extent he wishes. You remember the marbled covers and end-papers of oldfashioned ledgers? They were made in the same way.

The results that Mr. Chapman has achieved seemed to us extraordinarily suggestive. They don't look at all like paintings, but rather like slabs of highly colored veined and polished marble. There was a genie coming out of a jar, and around him several Arabian Nights figures, against a chaotic and gorgeous background. There was a pale horse with a veiled rider galloping through a wildly romantic landscape lit by a low wan moon. We liked best the undersea pictures a mermaid and several grotesque fish, and, above, the foaming shoulder of a huge green wave. We preferred the pictures that had had the least retouching. Too much definite detail made these seem rather cluttered, whereas the suggestiveness of the others was unhampered by clearness.

We would like to have one or two of these pictures. Definiteness is a tiring. thing to live with, whether it is in opinions or in line, and these, besides being interesting in design and color, are delightfully vague.

HANGING business conditions, plus

CHANG Competition for the consumers'

dollar, make it imperative to again scan your costs that you may be level with or ahead of competition.

You are quite sure your production costs are right, your organization trained and on its toes, but

how about your shipping room?

Are there leaks here that can be turned into profits? Are your crates rightly designed? Are they light, yet strong? How much lumber is wasted-how much time?

Would box shooks or cut-to-size crating effect a worth while economy? Could you use part of your packing room space for more production?

These are important questions. They all have a bearing on your yearly profits or your opportunity to get ahead of competition.

The Weyerhaeuser man can answer them. Ask him. Apply his expert crating experience and knowledge of lumber to your shipping problems. Let him advise which is most advantageous for you to use- crating lumber, box shooks or cut-to-size crating.