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Mother Knows Best. Edna Ferber's story, reputedly niched from the life of Elsie Janis, legitimactress, is borrowed by this piece. It concerns the cautiously ambitious woman whose life is a campaign to make her daughter a famed mimer. Ma Quail (Louise Dresser) tells daughter Sally (Madge Bellamy) that a variety singer, with whom she had fallen in love, has been killed at the front. As he must in all cinemas, the hero lives. Again Louise Dresser, the perennial mother, earns her reputation for reliable expositions; curiously apt is Madge Bellamy as Sally—curiously apt because in the past Miss Bellamy has acted like a caricature of an actress in the midst of the emotion of the moment.
The Docks of New York. He who mingles much with men whose biceps earn their bread and beer, knows the Bill Roberts (George Bancroft) of this piece. Bill Roberts is a stoker on a tramp steamer; he can lick anybody, is so much a creature of whim that he is incongruously whimsical, an animal whose life is single-fettered by a fetish-like rule, that of never missing his boat. Bill Roberts' boat puts in at an East River dock in Manhattan for one fog-shot night. Walking along the dock, Bill Roberts sees two feminine hands just above the murky waters of the river, instinctively clutching at a straw. Swashbuckling Bill drags at his cigaret, drops into the water and rescues the girl, takes her to a seamen's bordello. A hot toddy warms Sadie (Betty Compson) and Bill breaks open a clothing store to get her some dry clothes; picks a tinselly thing that fits her as closely as her water-soaked garments. In the course of the evening's lark they marry.
Bill leaves the next morning with no intention of ever again seeing Mrs. Roberts. Bill's third engineer ogles Sadie, goes to her room when Bill has departed for his ship, is shot in the back by Lou (Baklanova), his wife, who had befriended Sadie. Once again in the black gang (nautical name for stokers) Bill quarrels before Quarantine with the third engineer's successor, goes above and dives into the water. He swims ashore and arrives at Night Court in time to save his wife from a sentence of receiving the goods which he had stolen. When Bill takes the sentence of 60 days, he asks Sadie if she will wait for him. Says Sadie: "I guess I'd wait forever, Bill." The piece is recommended.
*Wallace Beery, ever loutish-looking, one-time husband of Marquise de la Falaise de la Coudray (Cinemactress Gloria Swanson), has a brother Noah Beery, ever fierce-looking, who never plays the fool. Even the early efforts of Wallace were buffoonish; he did a series of cinemas as a Swedish maid. With Raymond Hatton, Wallace was co-starred in a series of ludicrous funnies (We're in the Navy Now; Fireman, Save My Child; Now We're in the Air). Both Beerys were born on a western Missouri farm, were educated in Kansas City. Wallace is 73 inches high, weighs 235 pounds.