New-York tribune., 1919-08-26
On the Screen
''Checkers." With Tom Car.
rigan in Title Role. Provides
All Kinds of Real Thrills

Just why some theatres are allowed
to have motion pictures and others are
not allowed to have them has not yet
been made plain to US, although we have
heard both sides OF the question
However, the Actors Equity evi-
IDENTIFY did not attempt to stop "Check-
ers," the oldtme melodrama which
William Fox has put into the Central,
Theatre in its screen form.
"Checkers' is not the name of the
horse, as we have always suspected, but
the name of the hero. They called him
SO because of the pattern of his cloth
ing, but one has to take this on faitn,
for he does not wear them in the pct
ure. The only thing about his clothes
that might make one suspect that he
was tout was the fact that he wo:e
white draped band around his hat.
Pert Barlow owns the horse, whose
name is Remorsc. In seeking to bring
Checkers and decides that it is her
move. Forbidden by her father to
marry Checkers, she escapes from her
room by hinging herself from the win
! dow and landing in a tree, down which
she slides into the waiting arms of her
ostracized lover. They rush away in
a motor car while Remorse is rushed
the deserted fiance, hurres after them
and wrecks the car.
AS Pert and Checkers have joined Re
morse in the box car, they all go into
the river together, which is q good
thing, as the box car was on fire. OF
course. they escape, and, OF course,
Pert (what name.) rides Remorse to
victory.
And the villain, having put all his
money on the other horse, is ruined.
So in the evening he goes with his
where we suspect they smoked opium,
and a big Chinese chief or something
turns a knob in the wall and lets the
/ bottom out of the couch where he IS
reclining. We wanted closeup of
the place he dropped to, but that was
denied US.
Everything else was there. however,
rescue in hydroplane and jump
from a speeding motorcar to a train,
and lot of others besides.
The cast in all-star. Thomas J..
Carrigan is seen, in the title role:
Jean Oeker is Pert; Ellen Cassity, a
lovely blond creature who can act as
we'll as look, is .Alva, the sweetheart of
Arthur Kendall, and Robert Elliott is
Kendall.
To any one who likes melodrama at
it's mellowest we cheerfully recon-
mend this new Fox picture. 1t has a
thrill in every foot.
A Goldwyn picture called Hearts
ease" is at the Rialto. 1t is screen
version of Charles Klein's play and it's
theme is a little different from the
usual thing seen in the movies.
Of course we love them and we
should be as disappointed an any one
if they did not turn out exactly as we
expected; still this does no. prevent
US from knowing that any one with a
fairly well-trained movie mind could
see one reel of a picture and write
the r-maining four out of his head
and not have it differ radically from
the original.
Tom Moore is Eric Temple, a young
/ composer who is prosecuted and
robbed and slandered and cuffed
about, and finally turned out into the
rain, with his memory gone, by one of
the villains Ooh, yes, there were q
number Of villains in this p:ctureD.
Sydney Ainsworth is Sir Geoffrey
Pomfret. who steals Eric's opera and
has it produced as his own. 1t seems
to be at the Metropolitan, although we
! didn't suppose from the name, Hearts
ease," and the youth of the composer.
that it really. was grand opera It
looked to US ike musical version of
"Sumurun." Anyway, Eric had recov-
cred sufficiently from his bump on the