Friday Nov 28

Movies

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Papa doesn't say what movie he saw, but a few new choices have come to town since the last time he went:

• Wages of Virtue, a Foreign Legion story starring Gloria Swanson and directed by Alain Dwan. (Dwan, who made movies from the early 1900's through 1961, provides one of the more fascinating interviews in Peter Bogdanovich's Who The Devil Made It.) If Papa saw this film at the Rivoli, he would have particularly enjoyed the accompanying Flying Fist two-reeler because it starred the great Jewish boxer, Benny Leonard.
• A Sainted Devil, a tale of passion and revenge starring Rudolph Valentino
• The Price of a Party, a melodrama starring Hope Hampton and the first actor to go by the name Harrison Ford.
• The Breath of Scandal, panned for its dullness by The New York Times
• The Silent Accuser, starring the police dog Peter The Great, who, though "not as good looking as Strongheart or Rin-Tin-Tin," according to the Times, still made a graceful screen star.
• The Black Swan, a depiction of high-society intrigued dismissed as "very weird" and amateurish by the Times.