Moving Picture World (Dec 1917) - Learn About Movie Posters

December 22, 1917 THE MOVING PICTURE WORLL> 1805
Blaney, Wilbur Higbee as Draper and Anna Dodge as Mrs.
Draper have important parts in the good work.
"The Maternal Spark."
George du Bois Proctor is the author of this five-part Triangle
picture, which contains a considerable truthful observation of
life and is enlivened by the actions of a bright child and a
frisky dog. "The Maternal Spark" shows a young lawyer's rise
from a small country practice to a position of trust and importance
with the head of a great corporation in New York.
Helms has always been happy and contented with his wife and
child, but with the change in his fortunes comes a desire to
indulge in the amusements of the city. His employer has put
him in the way to make considerable money by speculation,
and is on friendly terms with his family. Helms gets entangled
with a woman of doubtful reputation, and she claims that he
has awakened a pure love in her heart. He is ready to leave
his wife and boy for her, when Mrs. Helms finds it out and
sends for her rival. The maternal spark in the woman is not
proof against the claim of the boy for his father's protection,
and she gives Helms back to wife and child. The employer
discovers the entanglement. He breaks Helms financially, and
the man is obliged to go back to the little country town and
start all over again.
The incidents of this story are all pertinent to it, and are
without exaggeration. The production has been given intelligent
direction by G. P. Hamilton. An evenly balanced cast
keeps the acting up to the right mark. Rowland Lee and
Irene Hunt are the leading players, and Joey Jacobs. Edwin
Jobson, Josie Sedwick, Frank Newburgh and Frank McQuarrie
have other important roles.
"B ecause or W<
The construction of "Because of a Woman." a seven-part
Triangle release, picturized by George Elwood Jones from a
story by E. Magnus Ingleton, leaves a great deal to be desired.
The story is of fair quality, but it is put together with so little
regard for dramatic effect that most of the situations miss fire.
Heroic cutting will improve the picture.
The plot is based on the sacrifice a man makes for the
woman he loves. Noel Clevering, a young West Virginian,
bears the stain of another's crime, and sees Muriel Gwynne
married to his rival. He still does all he can to serve her, and
in trying to prevent her husband from leaving her for another
woman meets his real fate, a charming young girl from New
York, 'who is visiting in the south with her invalid mother.
The work of the cast is uniformly excellent. Belle Bennett
plays Valerie Greenway, the New York girl, with spirit and
charm, and Jack Livingston is a manly Noel Clevering. George
Chesebro, Louella Maxam, Lillian Langdon, Josef Swickard and
George Pearce complete the cast. Jack Conway directed the
picture.
'Those Who Pay'
Seven-Part Thomas H. Ince Photoplay Written by Gardnar
Sullivan and Starring Bessie Barriscale Treats a
Vital Theme with Frankness and Truth
Released by U. S. Exhibitors' Corp.
Reviewed by Edward Weitzel.
IN
"Those Who Pay," a seven-part photoplay, written by C.
Gardnar Sullivan and produced by Thomas H. Ince, but two
of the incidents will be questioned by the spectator. For
the rest, they are woven into a drama that deals with life
frankly and truthfully, but confines itself almost wholly to the
weakness in humanity. As the title indicates, "Those Who Pay"
are the women who are the victims of their own folly and want
of firmness; and the scenes and incidents the author has used
in pointing his moral are generally discussed in the most
guarded manner in real life. The picture comes in the same
class as "To-Day," and infidelity is the mainstay of the story.
Regarding it purely from the artistic side, the drama is almost
without a flaw. It treats of the "eternal triangle." but does so
logically and with a directness of attack that forces the action
on without a halt or pause. The cutback is ignored as something
that never existed, and the dramatic balance of affairs
is adjusted with easy dexterity. The direction and photography
are also highly meritorious and throw the situations into constand
bold relief.
The story is a tragic one—tragic in its frequency, its pitifulness
and its revelation of how want and circumstances conspired
to entrap the girl of good intentions but weakness of
will. Opening with a foreword that is much too long and only
serves to dull the edge of suspense, it follows the career of
Dorothy Warner along the primrose path until the awakening
comes and she sacrifices herself rather than separate from his
wife and child the man who ruined her. Dorothy is a ten dollar
a week shopgirl, who falls into the hands of a man of position
and breeding after he has befriended her. Graham, a successful
lawyer, gives her a position in his office, and her gratitude
rapidly turns into deep love. And right here occurs the first
of the doubtful incidents. Graham has a number of other
clerks working for him, and yet Dorothy never learns that he
is married until after she has gone on an automobile trip and
spent the night with him. Confronted the next morning by
shame and remorse, the girl has every confidence in the man
she has trusted, and when Graham tells her that he is already
married weakly consents to become his mistress. He places
her in a fine apartment, and spends his spare time between his
two establishments.
Fate does not permit him to escape, however. A political
enemy informs his wife of the true state of affairs, and Mrs.
Graham acts with calmness and decision. She sends for
Dorothy, puts the case squarely before her and asks who has
the better right to Graham's love. She next tells the girl of
Graham's unborn child, and asks if it also must suffer from the
wrongdoing of its father. Dorothy, brought face to face with
reality, agrees to give up Graham forever. He enters just as
Those Who Pay" (U. S. Exhibitors).
she is leaving the house, and turns on her in the most cowardly
manner. This is the second incident that does not convince.
Dorothy's fineness of nature would have detected any such
mark of the cur, and she would never have loved him so
fervently. After renouncing him she remains loyal to the end.
and refuses to wreck his public career. The last scene shows
their final parting, and Dorothy sinks down with the cry,
"Mother, mother!"
Only the sternest of moralists will withhold their sympathy
from the unfortunate girl, and most persons will ask themselves,
What does life still hold for her? What is to be the
end? As usual, it is the woman who pays; the man goes free!
Bessie Barriscale is the Dorothy Warner. She is an excellent
choice for the part. The woman she projects on the screen is
one of those ardent, loving natures that is easily swayed
where her heart is concerned. The manner of her downfall
almost excuses the act so little does she contribute to its bringing
about. Graham takes advantage of her terror of a violent
storm to get into her bedroom, when a thunderbolt narrowly
misses the house. These extenuating circumstances are fully
indicated by the actress, and she is always consistent to the
mood of the character.
Howard Hickman plays Graham and follows faithfully the
lines laid down by the author. Melbourne McDowell is realistic
as the politician. Steve McNutt, and Dorcus Mathews
sketches in the character of Alice Graham with deft strokes.
It is a most fortunate thing for Graham that he has such a
woman for a wife.
Raymond B. West directed the picture, and Charles Stumar
was the pilot of the camera.
Blood-Stained Russia, German Intrigue,
Treason and Revolt
The War in Russia from 1915 to the Present Day Illustrated
in Pictured Events Arranged in Dramatic Sequence
by Donald C. Thompson.
Reviewed by Margaret I. MacDonald.
THE part that the moving picture is destined to play in
the recording of history is forcefully exemplified in the
eight-part production, entitled "Bloodstained Russia,
German Intrigue, Treason and Revolt." The scenes in this picture
were photographed and arranged in dramatic sequence by
Donald C. Thompson, staff war correspondent of Leslie's
Weekly, and with thoughtfully worded subtitles give as clear
an idea of Russia as she is, torn asunder and temporarily
impaired through the influence of German intrigue. Mr.
Thompson's frequent visits to Russia, which, in the last instance,
was prolonged over a period of eleven months, have
vested him with a superior knowledge of the situation, and
made him the possessor of a wealth of material with which to
paint his pictures. These visits to Russia were made in 1907,
1915 and November, 1916, returning to America only about a
month ago.
One of the opening subtitles of the picture gives the cue to
its predominating color. It is as follows: "Since March, 1917,
the world believes that Russia treacherously forsook her allies,
but records from my diary and camera will show that Russia's
anarchy was not willed by her people, but was caused by vile
German intrigue working in the unthinking masses." Then as
a fitting commencement of the true history of the Russian