New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1918-12-08
Bv Virginia racy

| By Virginia Tracy
,.nocent intellectual persons ask us
-. 49, sort OF polite terror, like dip
I ""r extending raw meat to tiger
'''D~ .s+ed from the Bolshcviki, what
'~,o,ligent creature like ourselves
/ ~ -. in movie acting. so bonn
81 -. nv dear, so false and tawdry
pSs', roek .heroic" That's their fetish
40" isek of naturalism. THE very
|, sa a of our actors return to the stage
ts.r the MOVIES with their art so
| s.ls;ted by exaggeration"--
i aTbev won't believe me-" we burst
i ,n+ to a long -suffering friend, when
4 nrnlain that no mans stage method
..n possibly grow exaggerated through
Il ,;s screen method, because every move
II ..ont he makes for a picture has to be
II "a toned down that it can stand the
1 Enormously magnifying process by
\ sb;ch it reaches the screen and yet
..,nsin p movement that won't brighten
children into fits. Oh, they're too
,lever to believe thatl Having asked
for information, they look over my
head with an distracted, superior smile
that's imperturbable because it's
deaf
"why argue, them" retorted our
friend. "Why not take them to see
Charlie Ray"
We did it. The picture was Honor
Thy Namel" the present reissue of
an old release. The spoiled but in
eenuous hope Of wealthy and aris-
tocratic family champions cheap little
adventures. falls in love with her,
sees her shown up by his father, is
recaptured by her, marries her, comes
to loathe her-could anything be trit-
or? Could anything be truer? Straight
to the end of the final rescue by the
magnificent old hero which Frank Kee-
nan contributed as the father, every
foot of the film was crowded with ma
ture itself, every-day-est nature, so
that to the sc-een-wise 1t was one long
triumph of the inhnitesimal muscular
infections, the almost impalpable play
OF response and reserve which form
the special province of movie acting.
And we awaited with an ogre-ish, lip
licking smile the surrender of our
intellectuals. Well cid we know why
our friend had suggested Charlie Ray
for their undoingi When an actors
approach to his work runs more along
the lines OF Warfeld's than of any one
else's you can't very we'll call that
approach mock heroic; when his char
acteristlc quality is largely the quail
ity of James Whitcomb Riley stiffened
by George AIDE you can't call Its quail
ity bombastic. No. but you can turn
clear round and call it only natural
II you are so clever that you can
look at a thing without seeing it,
you say that 1t isn't acting at all,
it's just personality They were still
triumphant, those intellectuals, and not
so much because they were deaf to
our poor arguments as because they
were blind-screen-b blind; because they
had yet to learn, poor innocents, that
they didn't know what they saw when
they saw it. Unless they saw it framed
in words by an author "The BOYS so
perfectly delightful" they beamed
upon US, Gust because he doesn't try
to act at all! In world where all
acting has to be mock heroic and bonn
bastic he has sense enough to keep
quiet and do nothing but just be him.
self. It's pretty, but it isn't art. Oh
OF course, it's a pleasure to see him
Just as It's a pleasure to see any nice
young American sitting opposite US in
the streetcar."
Hail and farewell, my invincibles =,
Alter I'll, we wonder how much of our
interest in Charlie Ray really does
come from seeing an American in
America, where it is often borne in
upon US that there are so few of them.
We are far from suggesting that
his Americanism itself is art. We, too
are acquainted with the ideal that an
actor ought to be able to play all COM
efs' from the spider to the fly, and we
freely admit that Ray is as helpless
70 suggest anything less than the full
hundred per cent as if he were a game
oil baseball. But at least he can play
any sort of American there Is. The
fuoe' the sport, the young business
man, the fresh kid, the timid lover
the drunken suicide or the devoted
soldier, the degenerate wording in
every phase of panic and meanness, or
inc gentle lineaged, gently reared
mothers boy" heroically developing u
SUN backbone, all these pour from
MN as simply as if by the grace of
uoa' articulated for good or i'll with
'he motion of American life and brim-
ming with American significance. II
We were all drowned tomorrow by
our Old friend the tidal wave. one
rescued film of Charlie Rays would do
10 show posterity what we were like
Yet his current release, "rhe Law
ol tne North" deliberately startled us
WIN surprise. Not, of course, a sur
prise IN the plot. That, indeed, the
triumph of experience over hope has