The New Pictures

Holiday (Pathe). Manhattan cinemaddicts discovered with amazement last week that the witty, rich and velvet sophistication out of which Philip Barry fashioned the best comedy of the 1928-29 theatrical season has not, in translation to the screen, been exchanged for the crude, stuffy plushes of Hollywood naivete. Presenting the situation of a youth engaged to marry an heiress but unwilling to accept the pompous responsibilities of great wealth, the story and its spirit might easily have been suffered to lapse into the Poor Little Rich Girl stereotype. When Johnny Case, deserting Julia Seton simply so he can have a holiday, is followed to Paris by Julia's little sister, a typical talkie denouement might have seemed inevitable.

But the unusual happened and Holiday still elucidates, with some truth and not too much solemnity, a civilized predicament. Mary Astor is properly severe and gracious as Julia. Ann Harding, as her little sister Linda, is less mannered and more attractive than was Hope Williams on the stage. Robert Ames grins and frowns as Johnny Case. The whimsicality of Edward Everett Horton, impersonating Linda's friend Nick Potter, sometimes threatens to grow stubborn, but he finds the proper gestures for Playwright Barry's famed success-story monolog, "How I Invented the Bottle."

Swing High (Pathe) depends entirely upon a widespread conviction, the nurturing of which the motion picture industry appears to regard as its most sacred duty, that circus sawdust is a powder of romance. Here a trapeze artist in a traveling circus becomes united, after vicissitudes and theme songs, with the protagonist in a medicine show. A distinguished cast including Helen Twelvetrees, Chester Conklin, Ben Turpin and Stepin Fetchit are involved in the itinerant sentimentalities. The villain is the ringmaster and has a mustachio.

The Unholy Three (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). When released as a silent picture in 1923, this film had a quality of strained and macabre horror which was largely dependent on the fact that none of the participants in its gruesome goings-on was able to make himself heard. No voice, it was well understood, could be so wheedling as the voice which one imagined would be used by Mrs. O'Grady, the keeper of a petshop, who was really a man and the leader of a band of thieves. Her grandson, whom customers observed cuddled up in a perambulator, was really a sly and wicked midget. It was unpleasant to imagine the shrill, false pipe in which such a monstrosity might have whispered to his cronies. As a talkie, The Unholy Three is less hair-raising because its sounds have become explicit. Lon Chancy still impersonates Professor Echo, a ventriloquist in a carnival who, when he turns thief, capitalizes his talents to make dumb parrots talk, to visit complaining purchasers in the guise of a muddled old lady while making notes for robbery. Later, when his associates have committed a murder, Echo takes the witness stand as Mrs. O'Grady to save a youth unjustly accused of a crime committed by Echo's partners. Harry Earles, sucking a cigar, appears again in the amazingly sinister role of the murderous midget. Lila Lee sobs convincingly as Echo's girl. Lon Chaney, speaking as ventriloquist, parrot, old lady or Echo, is as successful in disguising his vocal cords as he has always been in distorting his appearance. Best sound: the break in Mrs. O'Grady's voice which leads a suspicious lawyer to suspect her true character, whisk off her wig.

Lon Chaney's mother was Emma Kennedy, the daughter of a distinguished Coloradoan. She married a good-natured Irish barber who, like herself, was deaf & dumb. Lon, the second of four normal children, left school at the age of nine to take care of her. He could make his mother understand him by contorting his face into significant expressions. At 13 he went to work as a guide to tourists on Pike's Peak. Later he was carpet-layer, stage hand, vaudevillist. He married his singing and dancing partner; their son is a lawyer in Hollywood.

Chaney's first cinema job, obtained at once for the asking, was riding horses in a Western. After The Hunchback of Notre Dame he was regarded as an expert at disguises, wrote an article on make-up for Encyclopedia Britannica. A ventriloquist in vaudeville, he capitalizes this ability in The Unholy Three. He ascertained he could best imitate a female voice not in falsetto but by speaking quietly and enunciating carefully. Last of the great stars to make a talkie (except Chaplin, who still swears he will never talk), Lon Chaney explained his reluctance by saying that speech would limit his disguises, make it impossible for him to wear part of his make-up in his mouth Last week Chaney was visiting a Manhattan hospital twice daily for throat treatment.

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