Cinema: The New Pictures Dec. 31, 1928

My Man. In 1921 Fannie Brice worked into her act in the Ziegfeld Follies a Channing Pollock translation of the French tune “Mon Homme.” She knew that if her man got another chance, he would go straight. “No matter what he is,” she sang, “I am his . . .” and the song, sung well enough to be effective even if it had not had any particular significance, moved her hearers to an extraordinary pitch of sentiment because they knew that her husband, Jules W. (“Nicky”) Arnstein, was serving sentence at the federal penitentiary at Leavenworth. Now, in her first picture, she sings “My Man” again and also her other famous songs, “I’m an Indian” and “Second Hand Rose”; she recites “Mrs. Cohen at the Beach.” The plot is what it has to be to give her a chance to do her stuff. As a sewing-machine girl in a costume factory, she sings for the other girls at lunch, sings at the annual picnic, sings for the famed theatrical producer when he sends for her. Her singing and acting under Archie Mayo’s directing make a trite story new and interesting, and give Warner Brothers a hit almost as potent as The Singing Fool.

Born Borach, daughter of a French Jew who ran saloons in Newark, Brooklyn and Manhattan, Fannie Brice was romantic partly because she was homely and awkward. When she got a job in a department store she pretended she was starving and her father was blind; when the girls and the floor superintendent gave her presents and money, she laughed and said that she was only fooling. At Keeney’s Vaudeville House in Brooklyn when she was 13 she won $10 on amateur night singing “When You Know You’re Not Forgotten by the Girl You Can’t Forget.” She danced in Cohan and Harris’ chorus; in burlesque she sang some of Irving Berlin’s first songs; when she was 17 Ziegfeld headlined her in the Follies of 1910; two years ago she made her debut as a dramatic actress in Fanny. She had an operation on her hooked nose to make her better looking, but she said; “I’d rather not be beautiful. It’s hard to get a line on yourself if you’re beautiful.” One St. Patrick’s Day “Nicky” Arnstein, sought throughout the U. S. for his share in a $5,000,000 bond robbery, got into a cab at his front door and drove through a police parade to headquarters where he gave himself up. Fannie Brice paid for his defense. Although she owns a monkey, occasionally paints portraits, and likes to ride, she is one of the most original, unaffected, and forceful personalities in the show business.

The Haunted House. People have a peculiar and rather disagreeable way of reacting to dramas and pictures that are meant to be frightening. They laugh. Their laughter, of course, is not an expression of humor but simply of nervousness, a way of reminding themselves that it’s all make-believe. When an insane murderer fixes his gaze on Chester Conklin’s twitching face, they laugh; when a hairy hand comes out of a wall and yanks a beautiful girl into a secret passage, they laugh; they laugh at abduction, poisoning, ghosts. That the squeals of expected, shivery laughter greeted this adaptation of one of Owen Davis’ less terrifying plays was mainly brought about by Director Benjamin Christensen who gave a trite plot (heirs looking for money in a millionaire’s mansion) better treatment than it deserved.

Best shot: top of a spruce wagging like a sinister head against a window in a storm.

The Circus Kid. When the greatest lion-tamer in the world started drinking, he got scared of the lions. One day the tight rope walker gave him back his nerve by indicating that she liked him. The night he was to make his comeback, he saw her kissing the other lion-tamer. Later, drunk, he was mortally wounded rescuing his rival from a hungry lion and died with his head in the tight-rope walker’s lap. Not new, not dull, not convincing, not unconvincing.

The Circus Kid is not a bad picture to see if there is nothing good to see.

Revenge. Dolores Del Rio can stamp her foot, toss her head, show her teeth, snap her fingers in a way that makes you look at her; still more, she can twitch her eyebrow.* Sometimes it is one eyebrow, sometimes the other. Like those lads who, in school, have awed companions by a strange ability to flex their ears, Dolores Del Rio has awed nations of cinema-seers with her eyebrows. A bear-tamer, now, she twitches scorn for gentlemanly suitors, then pretends fury at Jorga, big brigand who beats her and cuts off her hair; at last a swift yet languid twitch of both eye brows together indicates her subjection.

Clever at pictorial arrangements of Holly wood extras dressed as musical comedy gypsies, Director Edwin Carewe has not managed to make exciting the routine masochism of his heroine.

* Just before Revenge opened in Manhattan Jaime Del Rio, divorced husband of Dolores, died in a German sanitorium after having been assured of her love. (TIME, Dec, 17).