NEW PICTURES

Slide, Kelly, Slide. There is an authentic story of a rookie who went South for a try-out with one of the big league teams. There he committed one unpardonable offense after another, using the veteran player's best bat, stepping to the plate before the regular line-up had taken its practice swings, etc. The old trainer looked at him in disgust, upbraided him. "Well, old man, you'd better get to like me," retorted the fresh kid, "because I'm going to be around a long time." Coming from a rookie, this was maddening. His name made old players froth, fume. But the manager approved. He signed the brash one for the season, and wisely. A sublime self-assurance, as any baseball players knows, is essential to one who would play the game.

This film recounts the adventures of a rookie pitcher, Jim Kelly (William Haines). He announced to the entire camp that "he could throw two balls at once and braid 'em." He wooed the manager's sweetheart Mary, (Sally O'Neil). He kissed her when she resented, in her athletic way, being kissed. He ran for home plate standing up on a close play--the sin of sins. He was pert, fresh, insolent, outrageous. But he was a born baseball player and the manager, Cliff Macklin, (Warner Richmond) knew it. After an entertaining series of adventures in which the audience sees expertly photographed pictures of Mike Donlin, Irish Meusel, Bob Meusel, Tony Lazzeri in real baseball action and almost smells the fresh rolled diamond, the frowsy gloves, the players' sweaters, the hero is filmed winning the final world series game for his team by sliding for home with a vicious lunge that sweeps him along the ground halfway from third.

White Flannels (Louise Dresser). Mother Politz insists that her boy Frank keep his pants clean and go to college. She insists that he drop his puppy love affair with his coal-mining-town sweetheart; that he be a football hero; that he evade the college vampire. When he seems to fail in her ambitions, Louise Dresser screws up her face marvelously and weeps colloquially. When he comes from a coal mine rescue in his white flannels and fondles his original sweetheart, his mother beams. Production is an evangelical hymn played on a portable melodeon--staccato.

The Demi-Bride (Norma Shearer). Criquette (Norma Shearer), convent-bred maid of Paris, glimpses one Phillippe (Lew Cody), making his ardent way to another woman's heart in the park nearby. This is the man for Criquette. Though he is her stepmother's lover, though he looks upon her as a creature of the nursery, she persists in wooing him. By inveigling, him into a compromising situation, she succeeds in forcing him to marry her. As she walks down the aisle of the church, the unhappy groom notices that his bride by compulsion is quite a beauty.