New Pictures

The Fighting Eagle (Rod La Rocque, Phyllis Haver). According to Conan Doyle's story, The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard, that hero's bombast was rivaled only by Emperor Napoleon's bombardment. The film shows Gerard bragging, boasting, swaggering and finally redeeming himself by helping the heroine recover important state papers from the wily Talleyrand. Just as a firing squad is about to punctuate Gerard's career of rodomontade, Bonaparte steps before the muskets and saves his brigadier. From that day forth, it is, "I sez to my friend, the Emperor, sez I . . . ."

The Patent Leather Kid (Richard Barthelmess). A tussle in the prize ring is one thing; a tussle in the trenches another. In the first, one can keep his hair slick between rounds and be reasonably sure that the fight will end as the managers agreed. But in the trenches, where a man's head may be blown off without contract, haircombs are counted superficial. Besides, there is no counter jab against a 16-inch shell. So the hero, once a cocky pugilist of the alleyways, turns yellow. But later he braces up, rushes a machine-gun nest, falls, comes to in the arms of his Red Cross nurse sweetheart. A delicate operation has been performed upon his shattered arm. Will he be able to use the limb? The audience watches in agonized suspense. Then the orchestra blares forth with "The Star Spangled Banner," the audience jumps to its feet, the hero's arm moves.

Service for Ladies (Adolph Menjou). The most perfect headwaiter in Paris, whom even kings know by name, goes vacationing to a winter sports colony in Switzerland, in order to be near the lady of his love-at-first-sight. There a thousand trifling circumstances force it upon his uneasy conscience that a headwaiter, though the apogee of elegance, is hardly high enough to reach for an heiress. Humbled for, the first time, he trudges back to his dining-room. There she discovers him. Being a democratic U. S. girl, the heiress graciously trots into the kitchen after the dejected one, inquires "What does it matter, anyway?" smoothes the lofty complacency that has suffered its first and only ruffle. Ernst Vajda, Hungarian playwright, wrote the scenario for this most delightful of recent films.