The New Pictures

The Vanishing American. Another western film that adds to U. S. history as did The Covered Wagon, and gives in the process excellent entertainment as did that memorable film, has appeared on the subject of the American Indian. It would be wildly impolitic to prophesy that The Vanishing American will be as popular a film as The Covered Wagon. Only time can tell that. It is built on the same plan, acted (principally by Richard Dix) with similar excellence, and is continuously interesting. For this, the very finest type of motion picture, there can be naught but eulogy.

The Midshipman. A phoney picture of modern U. S. life has been made at Annapolis with Ramon Novarro in the lead. In the days of its manufacture they thought that President Coolidge would hand the cinema actor his diploma. There was unrest among the politicians, and the doubtful honor fell to Secretary of the Navy Wilbur. The hero starts acting honestly but finally succumbs to the lure of his own uniform and overplays.

Satan in Sables. Good old cinema staple is hereby rewoven into a routine romance of Paris. The presence of Lowell Sherman, lurid villain of many a legitimate production (and of D. W. Griffith's Way Down East), is the only unusual feature. He plays a Russian millionaire on the loose in the French capital. There is the usual sweet and simple cocotte from Montmartre to enthrall him. If you like Hm on the stage, you will approve him in this movie--if you like the movies.

The Dark Angel. It was never satisfactorily explained last spring why the play (TIME, Feb. 23, THE THEATRE) from which this picture had its origin was unsuccessful. Possibly because the central character was a soldier blinded in the War, people were disinclined to favor it. It was, in any event, agreed to be an excellent play and has made an even more excellent movie. This blinded soldier fails to report to his fiancee his return to the land of the living, believing that she should not be tied for life to a broken anchor. Vilma Banky, Viennese blonde, and Ronald Colman play the parts. Miss Banky seems a singularly felicitous and decorative addition to the ranks of California celebrities. The Everlasting Whisper. Tom

Mix is rapidly filling the vacancy left by the withdrawal of William S. Hart from the two-gun picture field. Pobably Mr. Mix is by now even more widely a favorite than was Mr. Hart. He has made so many more pictures. They are nearly all alike, western stories of beauty and the brave. This is one of the best. Lovers in Quarantine. Bebe Daniels appears in the role played by Helen Hayes when this comedy was on Broadway Quarantine, reviewed in TIME, Dec. 29, THE THEATRE). She plays a little girl who ran away with her sister's lover and got unexpectedly segregated with him by a plague. Neither fell ill, except at heart. They were subsequently married and are generally entertaining through the whole process.