Word: screening
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Were it not for the occasional entrance into the novel of the stereotyped melodrama we have seen so often on the American screen, Mr. Gilkyson's novel would approach high quality. His prose is unflowered, simple and direct. It has the matter of fact tempo of its characters. Perhaps it is the most suitable fashion in which to achieve successful presentation of middle class people, but it is not even remotely capable of the engrossing effect of the style of Sinclair Lewis. Mr. Gilkyson has made a great potential story for Hollywood but he has sacrified quality in the attempt...
Blood Money (Twentieth Century), contrived as a vehicle to bring George Bancroft back to the screen after an absence of 18 months, is a mildly exciting little treatise on the bail bond racket. Its hero, Bill Bailey (Bancroft), is a bluff bondsman who gets into difficulties with his underworld associates when, to pay back a bank thief for stealing his girl, he makes less sympathetic arrangements than usual. It is notable less for Bancroft's contribution than for its villainess (Frances Dee), a pretty, well-mannered debutante who is also a masochist, a kleptomaniac and an exhibitionist. Good shot...
Aside from her interest in the stage, which is her life's work, Miss Brice confessed a weakness for wandering through antique stores and in her spare time she loves to go fishing. Her favorite actors, both on the stage and screen, are Paul Muni and Helen Hayes, and although she hasn't much to do with pictures she has lots of friends in Hollywood...
...show is a much improved John Boles who makes love to a newcomer, Margaret Sullavan, with plenty of savoir and no little wissen. Miss Sullavan shows herself a capable mime. She has a certain un-Holly-woodian freshness about her, a spontaneity found all too seldom in screen stars. She delivers her lines with sparkling zest, and can look and without looking stupid. Only on the deathbed scene does she become a bit wearying. Her face is just pretty--not beautiful, but attractive. her figure is, of course, flawless, and she wears clothes as they should be worn. The stars...
...whole program, despite its incongruity and questionable taste, is a solo rendition of the Ave Maria by Stuart Churchill, tenor of merit. There are some boop-o-doop girls and some bird imitators. The festive evening is rounded out with an inconceivably asinine organ solo, with words on the screen about the relative merits of Jamaica Plain and South Boston as places to call home. It all ends with a cheer for dear old Boston...