The Patsy. King Vidor, director of The Big Parade, has more recently gone in for cinemastudies of the average U. S. inhabitant (or babbitt, as some prefer). His findings are two of the finest films of the year: The Crowd, tragic story of a Manhattan clerk and wife; The Patsy, funny episodes of a suburban family that spends Sunday tiring itself out by trying to rest.
Marion Davies, who has taken off weight, plays the part of Patsy. She is abused by her sister and her mother (Marie Dressier with a face that could stop a thousand asparagus tips). She moons for a rising young realtor, but is made to stay at home and wash the dishes while her sister goes out with him. Later, the realtor tells Patsy that she must cultivate Personality; so she gets a set of books which enable her to amaze her family with such casual remarks as:
"When in Bagdad, do as the Bagdaddies do."
"All the world is a stage, and we are only stagehands."
Her family thinks she is stark, staring "buggy." But she tells her father her secret. He, a kindly babbitt, understands and finally helps Patsy to find the arms of the realtor.
At one point in the film, Miss Davies gives imitations of Mae Murray, Lillian Gish, Pola Negri, which make her a candidate for Ail-American funnywoman. In private life, she has been known to do an hilarious Charles S. Chaplin.
Three Sinners. There are more than three sinners. In fact, all the leading characters, except the little child, sin. But they do it nicely. Pola Negri, as the wife of a German count, takes a train from Berlin to Vienna, meets a musician, stops off to spend a night of love. Soon she hears that her train was wrecked before it reached Vienna and that she was reported dead. So, seizing opportunity by the hair, she puts on a snow white wig, changes her name, becomes a woman of adventure. Later, her husband meets her, does not recognize her; cinemagoers are surprised at what happens. Pola Negri does well.
Burning Daylight. Milton Sills is a red-hot rip-snorter of Alaska—so hot that he calls himself Burning Daylight. He finds gold, all right. He takes it to San Francisco, where he blunders into polite society. The slick city men hornswoggle him when he plays the stock market. But, finally, by virile tactics, he gets even with them and marches out of their office with a big black bag containing $3,000,000. Then dat ole debbil Burning Daylight says to his sweetheart (Mrs. Milton Sills, the onetime Doris Kenyon): "Let's go back to Alaska." And, three guesses and no fair peeking, who wrote the original story*
The Play Girl. Again, gold is dug and various parts of the female form peep out from silken things. The form belongs to Madge Bellamy, who plays a girl in a flower shop at the Ritz-Plaza.