Cinema: The New Pictures Dec. 22, 1930

Only Saps Work (Paramount). The story of this cinema is said to be taken from a play by Owen Davis. The title is one that Paramount, believing it would come in handy, bought from Courtenay Terrett some time ago. And Joseph Mankiewicz is mentioned in connection with the adaptation. But judging from the picture, which is hilariously funny, none of these authorities had much to do with it. Only Saps Work has been composed, acted and directed strictly “from the cuff” —the sort of picture in which cast, cameramen and executives on location go into a conference after each sequence to decide what to do next. It is Leon Errol’s picture, and the best stretches are those in which, postponing as long as possible the moment for the next conference, he extemporizes while the cameras watch. He is perfectly cast as a kleptomaniac. When he needs a smoke, the man sitting next him in the Pullman smoking room misses some cigars. When the train goes through a short tunnel, the same passenger also misses his ticket. Arriving at his destination, a health farm, Errol poses as a detective and makes a bellboy (Stuart Erwin) admire him so much that the bellboy has to be given lessons on how to be a detective. Richard Arlen and Mary Brian are present in a sentimental subplot but their talent is pretty much wasted. Climax: the automobile chase after the kleptomaniac has robbed a bank.

Leon Errol, son of a onetime Postmaster General of New South Wales who wanted his son to become a surgeon, has played drunks for 20 years throughout the U. S. and the British Empire, but he never drinks. He has been a clown, an animal trainer, an acrobat; he worked from burlesque into comic leads in Broadway shows. Most celebrated of his comic assets are his folding legs. When he was on the road with Louis the Fourteenth he had to stumble down a flight of stairs. One night one of the stairs was missing and he broke his legs. U. S. doctors said he could never fold again, but Vienna specialists proved them wrong. In London, Ambassador Dawes thought it would be fun to have Errol function anonymously as a waiter at an embassy dinner. Errol crashed silver and glass about, poured mineral water on a lady’s arm, dropped forks under the table and crawled after them with a flashlight, asking guests to move over, please. At last Ambassador Dawes arose, explained, introducing Errol, but some guests, unused to U. S. and New South Wales humor, failed to laugh. Offstage he looks unprepossessing. In his act he still wears the pair of Congress gaiters which he used in his first U. S. appearance.

See America Thirst (Universal). In silent pictures Harry Langdon was an important clown, but his circus left him behind when it became audible. Now his piping voice is recorded, a voice which fits his pasty face, his timidity, his effrontery as a slightly insane tramp. He is funny, but it is not his kind of picture, for there is nothing spontaneous about See America Thirst. It is a smart-aleck effort to raise slapstick to the status of formal satire. The subject here exposed to ridicule is the U. S. criminal class. Sometimes the satire fits in with true slapstick and then See America Thirst is successful, as when the rival gangs of hoodlums sing alternate songs of a collegiate rhythm to each other (“We’ll Take the Whole World for a Ride”), when they chalk out spots for enemy gangsters to be put on, when they fight a war from water hydrants across a street. Except for these moments, See America Thirst is, in spite of the ingenuity that has gone into it, a good deal duller than the old Langdon tworeelers. Specimen shot: Harry Langdon hanging in the muzzle of a cannon used in the penthouse arsenal of the gangsters.

Remote Control (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). As a Broadway play last year, this was successful because of the neat way in which its authors constructed a drama around a timely mechanical novelty —a criminal directing his associates by broadcasting to them from a radio station something which sounded like a harmless exposition of spiritualism. Remote Control has been taken in at some places and let out at others to turn it into a vehicle for William Haines, whose professional impertinence, disliked by most critics, is still highly salable to the public. He runs the radio station, is fooled by the criminal broadcaster. In its real outlines, aside from the radio novelties, the little story is as old-fashioned as East Lynne—a contest between the nice young man and the black-mustached villain for a pretty girl. Possibly William Haines will surprise his audiences by coming out the winner in the end, but this seems doubtful. Typical shot: Haines’s girl starting to drive off in her Austin, and Haines pulling her back to the curb by one mudguard.