The New Pictures

A Girl in Every Port.

" Said rollicking Bill, the sailor."

Elizabethan Ballad.

There are two rollicking sailors in this fractious and excellent comedy. One is Spike Madden, an amorous captain; the other is Salami, a tough, common, swab, whose philanderings around the world are vastly annoying to the first. In every port to which Spike Madden ventures, searching love and its accompanying delights, he finds that Salami has already appropriated the most lovely ladies. Enraged, he longs to meet his rival and give him a beating. He does not, however, discover the identity of Salami until this wayward character, traveling incognito, has worsted him in a street fight for which both are put in jail.

As might be expected the rivals become fast friends and are to be seen together scouting the bright seas for frolic and fistfighting. In Marseilles they meet Marie, who loves the swab and is beloved of Madden. She, a most charming piece, almost defeats their friendship, but not quite. At the end, Spike Madden and Salami, both very drunk, fare forth from Marseilles in search of further fun beyond the seas.

A Girl in Every Port is really What Price Glory? translated from arid and terrestrial irony to marine gaiety of the most salty and miscellaneous nature. Nobody could be more charming than Louise Brooks, that clinging and tender little barnacle from the docks of Marseilles. Director Howard Hawks and his entire cast, especially Robert Armstrong, deserve bouquets and kudos.

The Crowd. Director King Vidor and Scenarist John V. A. Weaver tell here honestly, finely, the story of an American Everyman, the man in the street, born to run with the pack. They put Eleanor Boardman, wife of Director Vidor, into the role of the wife, where she played with disconcerting beauty. They put James Murray, virile boy, into the part of John Sims, average child, average man. They seated him at a desk, one of a thousand clerks, high in a skyscraper. They sent him, fermenting with spring, to Coney Island with his girl, had him kiss her in the tunnel of love and bump her in the crazy house, until she leaned a tired head on his shoulder. Then they sent both to Niagara Falls.

John Sims & Wife come back to a closet flat, under the noise of the elevated, where the bathroom door swings open annoyingly, and the Murphy bed clasps catch on blankets. John becomes twice a father and gets an eight dollar raise. John and Mary worry and work; then in a mobbed street a truck crushes the baby, and John, frenzied, tries to stop the city because his child is sick. The acid of the tragedy bites his brain. He loses his job, his work fibre loosens, he is out of step with the crowd. When Mary threatens to leave him, he gets a sandwichman job; the work fibre tightens, and John Sims. Everyman, is once more running with the pack, happy.

The Shepherd of the Hills. Old-fashioned as a hair sofa is this movie carved from a Harold Bell Wright best seller. Dully, the story preaches the value of turning the other cheek, the ex-minister here involved turning his with the monotony of a metronome. An ex-minister reaches the sheep country, settles among the farmers and sheep owners, and tries by faith in the good to bring them through such troubles as drought and failing crops. Misery bumps the characters around, until the great rain. The humbleness of Alec B. Francis and the plumpness of Molly O'Day take up most of the footage.

Love and Learn. Chilling, blonde, Esther Ralston maintains her clotheshorse position in the records of Paramount in this odd little piece wherein her efforts are aimed at the prevention of a parental separation. By plunging, in her straight eight, through the front of the police station, the young lady manages to get to jail, there overhears the details of a conspiracy to drag the young and charming judge who sentenced her into a badger-game.* She goes to his room, prevents compromise, reveals the plot, wins love. A divorce is prevented, her adventures having kept father and mother together.

Her Wild Oat. She runs a lunch counter. He is rich and romantic. He goes to Plymouth Beach. She follows him, wearing a wig and acting like a gold-digger's idea of a grande dame. He meets but does not recognize her. She says she is the Duchesse de Granville. The real Duchesse de Granville is his stepmother whom he has never seen. She, accordingly, is in a fix. She runs rapidly away, chased by police, house detectives, him. She returns to her lunchwagon. He ties the lunchwagon to his limousine and drags it to the door of his palatial house. She is Colleen Moore. He is Larry Kent.

*Police slang for the decoying by a woman of some man into her house for the purpose of robbing him.