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Dour, red-haired Director Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau (real name Plumpe-murnau) was born in 1889, educated at Heidelberg and Berlin University. He got Max Reinhardt to give him a part in The Miracle. In 1921 he started to make movies in Berlin—The Hunchback & The Dancer, The Janus' Head, Nosferatu. In 1925 he surprised the world with The Last Laugh, about a doorman in a big hotel, by many considered the best silent cinema ever filmed. A year later he made Faust, then went to Hollywood where he directed Janet Gaynor in Sunrise and Four Devils.
He collaborated with Director Robert J. Flaherty (Nanook of the North, Moana) on the story of Tabu. He built himself a house on Bora Bora, 300 miles from Tahiti in the Society Islands, and spent three months selecting natives for his cast. Six months ago he returned to Hollywood. Last fortnight he was killed when his car ran off the road some miles north of Santa Barbara, rolled down a 30-ft. embankment and landed on him at the bottom.
Man of the World (Paramount). William Powell plays the role of a slightly sentimental blackmailer, faced by an unusual dilemma. Operating in Paris as editor of a scandal sheet he performs his extortions so skilfully that he finds himself admired by his victims and falls in love with one of them. The blackmailer is in a quandary trying to decide whether to reform himself or to disillusion his inamorata. Convinced that reformation is impossible, he blackmails the girl, sails for South Africa on a tramp steamer.
*The epithet is not completed in the talkie. On the stage it was.
†In Chicago last week the actual and original Hilding ("Hildy") Johnson, for 20 years criminal-court reporter for the Chicago Herald & Examiner, died of injuries sustained some months ago when he was hit by a motor-truck.