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About Morning Oregonian. (Portland, Or.) 1861-1937 | View Entire Issue (July 8, 1919)
THE aiORSIXG OKEGOXIAX, TUESDAY, JULY 8, 1919. z FAILS IH EMOTION The Red Lanterns' Described by New York Literary Critic. EARLY REELS DELIGHTFUL Lt9 Sensationalism in Scrnca and Finer Recognition of Value on Part of S tar .Desirable. turn should develop Into the goddess dictating terms to an empress, then to the vanquished war maid, defiant to death. Instead of the novelty of incident and circumstance, the emo tions, the psychology which these per sonages might offer her. what does the scenario offer her? Well, what we might call In the movies the regular thing. Im Mme. Naxtmov were a helpless employe we should rather praise than blame her for giving to this nonsense only second-rate effort; it is worth nothing better than the stereotyped emotions or lack of emotions which she employes in It. But she is not helpless In the hands of either director or scenarioist; she is not a person whom one easily sees weep with delight when they give her a smile nor tremble with fear at their frown. Fhe might surely have had any development of the sce nario she liked. Why does she treat the war maid like a highly decorative scrap picture? Or if she wants to keep Mahlee a mere peasant with no race pride and race despair save as she sni vels about herself, what is she doing that death? What point is there in the defiance of that thronged corpse unless it is also the defiance of China? For this she has courageously de fled the common weakness of a happy NtTW YORK. By popular demand . endin(f with which tne dictum goes N'aiimova and "The Red lantern" had I that the public must be soothed. But is 1 return date at the IMvoli last week; I It really true that we are soothed into a fact, we are Informed without pre- r..Unr A I so m fact wrncn - . , .h. hmrv srhost of what the publ:.-. writes Virginia Tracy in the Tnhunf. Tho.- who are refreshed and rrjoicd by anvthing so quaintly, so au thentically delightful as the opening .f the ptiture wonder what nourish ment th ret f u find in the empty and sen.Is.- hubduh of its close. Kor the earlirr rels are so good that we thought we bud found in them the r.;nbw end. The street in Peking: the cobbler. bth!r: the slip of a girl hIhi .stops i- have her shoe mended he o-r home to which she goes and a'.! rf.e ?ute!ent scenes of native living r,- enchaniincly freh: we are not dis enchanted even when one-half of Mah re turns out to be of what blood'.' white biood ! The lealh off the Oraadnolber. However, as a half caste. Mahlee has a: lrat never had her feet bound and v e soon are diverted by the old Chinese grandmother who in hr bed on the top of the Moe. lies lonciim for death and et dif'OviTs through some dark magic that, though the owl has called thre time-;, rirath will not accept the grand mother of a c;rl w ith big feet. A quaint horror begin to fascinate us. the pic ture become possessed by an eerie and witching spirit, as simple and irrestist ible as folklore; the owl calls, the lamp burns low. a sort of Hallowe'en thrill creeps up the spine of the spec tator, and when the terrible old woman at length demands that the girl cut off her feet, there is nothing incred ible about it even the girl's appalled onsent falls into place like the right r hy me Thefanaticism and supersition. the homeliness and timpleness mingled with the fantastic, the fine dignity of most ordinary actions, such as the washing o fa dish, each activity having its own place in a long established civ ilization, these are moulded by Mme. Xaximova's economy and simplicity of motion and by a photography almost .is creative ns Tourneurs into an ex pressiveness which Capellani has made sincere and t plcal. like- legend, like the very face of a people. This. now. is what we call direction. From then on there is not sincerity enough for one more paving stone. It is as though the work of one man .-topped and another began. Well, when we tfll you that the half-white girl, fainting from a stash across her ankles, is found by a handsome all-white youth from the mission, then, surely, we need tell oii no more. You know already that Ma nice is taken to the mission, that she becomes its favorite daughter, that she falls in love with the handsome youth and be with her. that, as he is -truck by the half-whiteness of the hand locked within the a II-whiteness of his own a circumstance which up fn that moment he apparently has not happened to notice; you know the murky whiperthat thrills through thu audience. "It's yellow;" The mission shares the hero's shock at one-half of the heroine's nationality and things brgtn to happen: things that might have made one of the great pictures of our day. The "Uir lalV Kor Mahlee. in her passion for re venge, flees to the Boxers, who set her impersonatin ghe goddess of the red lantern, the t'htnese war maid, re turned to earth that she may rouse her tteople to drive out t he foreigners. Finally, w !itn her ow n father has re fused her offer of peace, if only he will ack low ledge her, the goddess vouch safes to appeal to the empress of hina and enlist her sympathies on the side of the Boxers by predicting that a great ictory shall sweep the foreign ers fro nthe land. The prophecy fail ing and the goddess being deserted by hr own people, she takes poison ; the v ift or ions foreigners, among them the all-white lover, enter the palace only io ftnd her dead body, seated on the f .rs.iken t hrone. Now is not this an Ideal story for a picture? An ideal part for a star of .Mme. Nav irnoxa's somewhat sinister arrety and force? We cannot resist calling attention to the fact that, whereas we ar :ck to death of always complaining of picture stories and al ways painc homage to picture acting, here is a story worthy of the best act ing there is; a story upon which the .it'tinc. the direction and the scenario , alt tui their backs for the ake of j nothing more nor less than some street I scenes. j Well, lake the street scenes. They are cfft ctive. but their effectiveness is J i nil l vi n oa tie i it ii i'(iuurinir. a uu not a Kussian ballet, if you please. There are a lot of beautiful settings, of beautiful rushings and tumults in picturesque lightings crowd splendor, a Vachel Lindsay calls it which sur vive as bet they may amid the hustle and the hu'Iabaloo. amid the masses of people strenuously obeying somebody's irlea. that the brass must crush and the Trumpet bray, and we'll cut a dash as one of the most lavish and opulent pro ductions ever made. You have the srne of multitudinous swarms of su pers working lige ollies, of directors .nd assistant directors shouting all day through megaphones, of care ann toil and conscientious consulting with cos tumers and decorators and of munifi cent expenditure. "Mohby" Mob. But jls for any sense of a people et afire, not one flash. There is no ter rible mob rage, no patriotic or national sentinient. no atmosphere of religion frerxied to fanaticism; there are only crowds running up and down. Like: most pictures tarting out to be b:g' pictures, this one contains congrega tions of scenes, congregations more or less disorderly. Instead of waves lift ing themselves toward a satisfying ( crest. Those who saw the uprising of j the people around the cathedral in J j Gordon Edward's direction of The t Hunchback of Notre Pame" will re-' n:errber the gathering together of rest-! tve Individuals, the growth of a mys terious, convulsive agitation, the fu-; sion of 1 personal feeling into thej tossing of a furious, pent-up sea, until the solid wall of high-piled ocean sweeps at last Into the outraged but ptiil ominous and engulfing shadows of the areat cathedral; they know what carfi fce done In crowd-splendor that is .inm.t and not ballet. The loss is heart-breaking, but of all losses we wonder what Mme. Xaximova thinks of te loss of her part. For exactly the same thing has hap : aed to it emotionally that has hap pened to the emotions of the crowd. It int there. We have the docile little mall whom Nsiimm plays with such illuminating sobrtety. but she never changes la the vengeance, itbo in her playing with tragedy only by its being made into & scrap picture without scope or depth or sincere passions? Or is it possible we might have liked it even better if some one had insisted upon having well. say. the least little bit of these things slipped In somewhere? BANKERS' AID NOT NEEDED rafn Corporation Announces Agree ment With Millers. NEW YORK. With a total of $1,150.- 000.000 at its disposal fur financing the purchase and carrying of wheat pur chased from the farmer under the gov ernment guarantee, the United States Grain corporation, which is handling the crop again this year, is not expected to call upon the banks for any large loans to help carry the crop. Last year the corporation borrowed several hun dred millions of dollars on acceptances during the season in order to carry the wheat until it would be liquidated. A letter sent out by Julius H. Barnes, t'nited States wheat director, to more tlmn 3(hi banks all over the country with regard to the new form of con tract between the grain corporation and dealers and millers and its bearing on credit that banks may advance to deal ers and millers, says: "The wheat director, in order to make effective the congressional guarantee of wheat price, proposes to make this effective to the producer by trade con tracts, particularly with those trade agencies reaching the producer, rather than by license regulation. 'With this in view, after numerous trade conferences, we have devised con tracts which we expect to execute with probably 5000 mills, 15.000 grain dealers. 3000 flour jobbers and 1,000 bakers. Through these contracts is constructed machinery to reflect a lower resale price of wheat products in this country, I snouia mat oecome necessary, ana witn the least possible chance for misrepre sentation or abuse. "tl is an essential feature of these contracts that those facilities that buy from the producer should pay the guar antee price as named in the president's proclamation, or a fair reflection there of, and contracts with these two trades are framed accordingly. "It is important that there be the fullest understanding and confidence that credit extended to those facilities on baj?is of their contract obligations to pay the guarantee price will be prop erly secured." FIRST AS HOSTESS Constant Stream ol Tounc Men From the West Pours Into Par lors of Xew York Mansion. Peas Known as "McAdoos." WASHINGTON'. Farmers who want to buy quantities of the variety of field pea introduced several years ago by the United States department of agri. culture from Germany, and then known as the "Kaiser" pea. will save trouble by not using that name any more. These peas are now known as "Jlc Adoos." and they are as widely dis tributed through the northwest as lib erty bonds, which caused the substitu tion in name. NEW YORK. Mrs. Benjamin Harri son, widow of President Harrison, has I won the distinction of entertaining I more officers of the American army and navy during the present war than any other hostess in New Tork. As head of the entertainment bureau of I the officers" service department of the New York War Camp Community Serv ice she has afforded clean amusement and entertainment to 1400 officers week. Of course, many of these are repeaters." who found in Mrs. Harri son's department just the sort or pleas ure they were looking for. Perhaps the most striking phase or this bureau's work is the quiet manner in which it sent the officers from all parts of the country into the homes of the social elite. There has been a con stant stream of young men from the west pouring into the parlors of the mansions of the city for afternoon tea. dinners and dancing parties. And all this through the efforts of Mrs. Harrison. "These men have seen a side of life htat they would never have seen in any other way." said Mrs. Harrison, some times 1 wonder if it won't spoil them when the lime comes for them to go back to their old life, but then I rea son out that the experience will have broadened them, made them better and will help them a., their lives. "The houses which have been opened to them generally welcome none but those whose names appear prominently in the society columns of the news papers, but during the war they were j opened to hundreds and hundreds of men from ail parts of the country who had heard of Xew York's social life as a thing never to be seen." In addition to seeing the homes of these wealthy people, the officers have had an opportunity to meet the debu tantes of the season have danced with them, hatted with them and eaten with them. The girls whose pictures have appeared the fashion maga zines have become "chums" of the men 1 from the west. The "golden horseshoe" of the Met ropolitan has been thrown open to I these men, too, and this came about as the result of Mrs. Harrison's efforts. During the winter season Mrs. Harri son had o nher desk at the Pershing club tickets left there by boxholders who found some other engagements interfering with their pursuit of the opera. These tickets were turned over to the officers who wandered into Mrs. Harrison's office looking for the day's entertainment. And a touch of olive drab was visible that night in the box tiers of the opera house. "How the boys have loved to dance!" exclaimed Mrs. Harrison, as she told of the work of her department. "We arranged dances for them at the Im perial and the Holland House, and the girls who attended were the best in the city." There were innumerable dances in the private homes of the hostesses who had used Mrs. Harrison's bureau as a means of getting in touch with the lonesome officers, and theBe were as well attended as the bigger affairs at the hotels. Despite the arguments of the theater managers that they had turned over I all their spare tickets for the enlisted men. the hostess-general talked and :'. Set Contents 15 Fluid Pracrmj jJj mm mwm i t L'&i - i i r A T si OM 1 1 r- mi L . !'. 0 ' II ) WLCOHOL-3 PER Cffltf- fj :f AYeeelaottiTeparauoniarn- 3 1 I'sirrulatiniUieRjodlwKcgnia- -t - c. t. A TI-mK Y Thcreb7Prornotiti$Ditcs1ioi Cheerfulness and Restfoflfc" v nctthcrOoiam. Morphine no 3 Mineral. XotXahcotic J mirl It'll 3 C5 1 T'J IHrm W I For Infants and Children. ft rt.-x; fiuuisrs luiov nai Genuine Castoria Always Bears tho Signature. of mm J A hctnf nl Remedy Ibr s Constipation and Durrnoeii nd Fcvmsrmess LOSS OF SLEEP ; resiflting rftcrefttxn-'"rcttflqf lac Sinule Sinnirect The terpen Gcw-W- MEW UK IF In Use For Over Thirty Years Rheumatism, Sciatic Nerve Trouble and Foot Trouble Dislocated bones and ligaments of the foot affect the sciatic nerve and cause pains in dif ferent parts of the foot, legs and upper parts of tlie body. People come to me from all over the states of Washington and Oregon who have dotored for rheumatism, sciatic nerve trouble and foot troubles, without results, and I have triven them instant relief and a permanent correction of their troubles. No matter how long you have suffered. I can give you relief. ROBT. FISHER Foot Specialist Foot Comfort Store, S55 'Washington, Bet. Id A 3d worked until she completed arrange ments whereby the officers could pur chase seats in almost any theater at half-price. This arrangement still holds good, and the officers are apply ing fo rthe tickets every day. Outdoor Fields Enjoyed. But winter as gone, and the season for outdoor sports has set in, so Mrs. Harrison has centered her efforts now on securing good places for golf, tennis and yachting for the officers. Already she has lined up several courts and links for the men, and in many cases is able to offer them the girls with whom they danced through the colder months as partners In the games In the open air. Motoring has always been an appeal ing invitation to the men, too, and many parties have been supervised by Mrs. Harrison. She tells with pride of some of the men who were started on the trips early In the day and finished with a dinner in one of the big homes of the city. "The officers are Just as human as the enlisted men," she says, "and we ought to provide Just as wholesome amusement for them while they are in this city. That is why I have been making this bureau my contribution to the war work. I thought we could stop when peace was declared, but the demand is just as great now as it ever was, and I think we will have to keep it up for several months." Kenfl The Oreeonlan rlns1fl! vis Mrs. Benjamin Harrison Heads Entertainment Bureau. HOMES OPENED TO MEN I'll s- ovv.i.v--'"'-..-'-: .. V I I Anyone with a'dollar, needn't have dandruff A Guaranteed Remedy Dandruff , is annoying T and unsightly.': Its possession is almost a personal disgrace. It robs women of their natu ral beauty. It handicaps the best groomed man. It thins women's hair and i makes men bald. The largest laboratories in exists ence devoted to the care of human hair with forty-five years' experi-. ence and factories covering eight acres of floor space guarantee that "KDX" will drive away dandruff for one dollar. Simply and harmlessly a few appli cations will relieve any man or woman of the burden of dandruff. Take a dollar to your drug store today and know the joy of clean, growing hair. liii It- U I 8 I III I ' liii liii i ALC0K0L 8V DAfDSUPF EXTEPiSLWJ ti Koken . Laboratories i St. Louis BSdekedI ., if iff off6 cx CTUU Wf THI