For the first time in our nearly ten years of operations, we are confronted with the problem of a "no-show" print. Once we had a print that couldn't be projected, and several times delays have caused us to reshuffle dates, but today we are faced with the situation that BURN UP BARNES was despatched
from Hollywood some 12 days ago, and still hasn't arrived. All that can be done to check and trace has already been done. These notes are written late on Monday evening, and we are hoping against hope that the print arrives with tomorrow's mail, in which case it will of course be shown, without notes alas, and with improvised music, but at least it will be up there on the screen. But, preparing for the worst, we have to find a substitute, and looking around for a film of the same type have had to come up with a repeat of LET'S GO, a good stunt-thriller by Richard Talmadge, circa 1923, that we first showed some 7 years ago. We think it'll be new to most of you, but in any event we're screening it second so that those who don't wish to see it again, can leave at the half-way mark. It seems unlikely that BARNES can be delayed for more than a few days now, and so we'll hope to run it at the Film Group showing on Friday, and if you don't want to take a chance on that, just call my office - MU.3-6300 - on Friday and I'll confirm whether or not it is to be shown. Again, our apologies - and the fact that it's an unimportant picture that probably will draw but a small percentage of our membership doesn't lessen our regret at being unable to deliver.
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WESTBOUND LIMITED (FBO, 1924) Presented by P.A. Powers; produced and directed by Emory Johnson; story by Emilie Johnson; photographed by Ross Fisher; 5 reels.
With Ralph Lewis, Johnny Harron, Claire McDowell, Ella Hall, Richard Morris, Wedgewood Nowell, Jane Morgan, Taylor Graves, David Kirby.
Veteran members of the Huff Society are by now well familiar with the films of the Ralph Lewis-Emory Johnson team, appealing and well-made blendings of melodrama, action, sentiment and drama. The formula rarely varied, Lewis invariably cast as the old fireman, engineer, policeman and what have you, facing retirement, and proving that he's more the man for the job than anyone else, WESTBOUND LIMITED doesn't have the production values of some of their later films, and especially those at Universal, but it's a neat, well photographed and altogether attractive programmer, as well made as all the FBO actioners, and betraying its budget only via an occasional sub-standard miniature. From a marvellous, Louis de Rochemont style foreword, to a genuinely Griffithian climax in which danger piles upon danger, and all the scattered riot strings are drawn together, it keeps going at a rapid clip, cutting back and forth between the various plot elements before any one of them has a chance to pall. Its only real drawback is the heroine, one Ella Hall, quite the homeliest leading lady we've ever run across. Why her parents are so devoted to her, why her horse worships her, why the hero finds her entrancing, and why the villain goes to such lengths to try to seduce her, are plot weaknesses that just baffle further comment!
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LET'S GO (if shown) is an early, 1923, directorial effort of William K. Howard, an obscure film not normally listed in his biographies. Lucien Andriot, to become one of his favorite cameramen, photographed. The plot, like those of later Richard Talmadge vehicles, is thin and minor, being merely an excuse to string together three or four prolonged acrobatic stunt sequences. These amazing leaps, dives, falls and other tricks still pack quite a punch, and Talmadge's pleasant personality comes over rather well -- better, certainly, than it did in talkies. (No actor, Talmadge spoke his lines as though constantly out of breath - which he might well have been under the circumstances!) Talmadge's later features for FB0 were more relished, but he never really got into the big time as a star, though he was also extremely active as a double for Fairbanks, and as a second unit director on such sound films as Trail of the Lonesome Pine, The Real Glory, Beau Geste and North to Alaska. Let's Go also features Eileen Percy, Tully Marshall, George Nicholls and Mathew Betz.
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NEXT TUESDAY: ISLE OF LOST SOULS -- THE NINTH GUEST
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