The New Pictures

Woman Proof. George Ade and Thomas Meighan have combined to produce their third selection of excellent entertainment. Ade has conceived a misogynistic Meighan with $5,000,000 in the background if he marries. Not until Lila Lee enters does the fortune budge. She discovers the matter of money and declares he seeks cash rather than connubial bliss. But there is another reel or two.

The Common Law. This picture demonstrates the epigram of a certain playwright that a girl can be a model and still be model. In the course of the demonstration it unveils miles and miles of that opulent shoddiness, that Brobdingnagian ill taste which is the cinema hall-mark of ignorance.

The picture makes an elephantine gesture at salacity, but--since no one was around the studio to joggle the camera--the model, professionally attired, remained just outside the flickering rectangle.

Corinne Griffith is implicated as the model, while her artistic employer is Conway Tearle. After continued association in his studio--which is conceived with all the delicate intimacy of South Station, Boston--they fall in love. His patent leather parents feel something akin to internal rising and active nausea at the prospect. Sweet, sensible girl that she is, Corinne clears away complications with an offer to become his common-law wife. But at this, the producers perceived, the agitation of the censors would overrule even the perturbed parents. Therefore the parents reconsidered and strains of Mendelssohn were soon a requisite.

Robert W. Chambers is the author. One does not perceive how pernicious his writings really are until one witnesses their effect on the naiaee mentality of the cinema manufacturer.

The Drivin' Fool. A terrible actor in an impossible play contrives to be fairly amusing. Probably its merit is due to its frank irrelevancy to fact. The hero (Wally Van) is a useless citizen except for his complete inability to drive an automobile at less than 50 miles an hour. With his father facing bankruptcy, Wally wildly drives across the continent in seven days to save him. By dint of whirling the camera crank at double time the illusion of breakneck speed is attained throughout. This cuts the showing time down to about an hour. It is a wise move.