(See front cover)
The Awful Truth (Pathe). The efforts of young couples recently married to make adjustments requisite to their new mode of living have furnished material for numerous theatrical pieces, few of them more lighthearted than this play of Arthur Richman's. It was a play well fitted to be made into a picture because it moves fast, avoids dexterously all the deeper implications of its situations. Even the judge and family friend who early in the proceedings grants the Warriners an interlocutory decree of divorce is clearly in collusion with the author in his determination to bring things out happily. After the hearing he leaves the two who are no longer husband and wife alone in his chambers. Coming in, after a decent interval, he is so hopeful of a reconciliation that he is bold to ask Ina Claire whether "anything had happened," and Miss Claire, who has spent her respite quarreling with Henry Daniel about opening a window, answers laconically, "Nothing unusual." You might lift her phrase from its context and apply it as criticism to the picture as a whole but only, in fairness, if you excluded the suavity of the tone with which it is uttered and the unfailing gaiety that gives it point. Director Marshall Neilan does a good job transposing stage values to the screen. Actress Claire plays with a deftness perfected during the weeks when she was doing The Awful Truth on Broadway. Denouement: the husband learns the awful truth of the intrigue of which he has suspected his wife, and which, of course, was not an intrigue at all. Best shot: showing the use that can be made of a pass key.
In a year filled with the marriages of prodigies-George Herman ("Babe") Ruth to a showgirl; Charles Augustus Lindbergh to the shy, poetic daughter of an Ambassador; James Joseph Tunney to an outdoorish girl descended from one of the great steel families-not the least startling was the marriage of John Gilbert, ballyhooed by millions of shopgirls as the greatest living exponent of male sex appeal, to Ina Claire (TIME, May 20). It was particularly startling because up to the moment when their marriage was announced Gilbert was supposed to be betrothed to Greta Garbo, the greatest living exponent of female sex appeal, and Miss Claire to Scenario Writer Gene Markey. She had known Gilbert for only a fortnight. They were married in Las Vegas, Nev., before a little group of cowboys, storekeepers and cinema friends. Those members of the cinema public not familiar with Miss Claire's stage reputation were informed in a flood of publicity material what sort of a Thisbe this was who had charmed their Pyramis. The secret of her success seemed compressed into the following grave statement by Miss Claire (in an "interview" where she was discussing Mistresses Nell Gwyn, Cleopatra, Lady Hamilton et al):
"A glance into the pages of history certainly should convince one that the famous beauties of the World were never lacking in native intelligence and shrewdness. . . . To emulate the achievements of any of the noted beauties of the world requires a pretty highly-geared mental equipment."