New-York tribune., 1919-01-12

she sept our sympathy. And as soon
as he let her drop she put for home as
last as her legs could carry her. and
delivered her testimony with free
heart What, then, melted the armor
OF the middle-aged ironclad husband
Ihere was no husband. She had been
f'rmly in love all along with an ex-
tremeiy pretty boy, still limp with
youth, whom she had never been ablc
10 BRING quite to the scratch. Rut
after she had burst out in his defence.
thus publicly in court, the least he
could very we'll do was to give her a
kiss And in The Dawn of JJnder-
standing this was all the understand
ing that dawned. Tell me, do you think
thls dear little pet-and she was a dear
little pet, since it was Bessie Love who
played her-do you think she got more
sympathy from her audience than that
bewildered girl who scarcely saved her.
self from living burial in the quicksand
she had wandered into when she was
swinging incense to the stars? Do Won.
feally?"
The Movie Fan wormed round un-
easily.
"Said you, Her being in love with a
circus performer is all people remem-
Der nowadays.' BY that foolish mid
summer nights dream, then, Sue has
on and off recaptured the interest of
audiences for twenty years. Could they
have found it SO very unsympathetic :?
Can you possibly suppose that this in
nocuous little movie will be remem-
bered by anybody in another twenty :?
A lady once said that Howells had no
true knowledge, Of women, because he
had never created one who was physi-
cally, mentally and morally perfect. Is
! that your movie idea for sympathetic
heroines? Oh, I'll leave out the men
tally if you like. Yet SUI in her
mere human mperfection"-
The Movie Fan growled out, ooh,
now, you know as we'll as l do how it
must all have happened. They wanted
picture for an ingenue star and it
was about time for her to have another
W Western, so somebody suggested Sue.
! But when they came to look her up
they didn't quite like her being mar
rled, Bessie Love having whole life
time ahead of her to play married
parts. And if they made people think
of her, so early in the game, as a mar
rled woman it might kill the sympathy
for her as an ingenue''--
Go on" we grimly interjected
$50 they cut out the husband. But
| suppose they unconsciously got to
thinking of Sue as married woman
anyhow, and were afraid if she showed
any response to thk circus rider she'd
lose the ympathy-being an ingenue
| star. So they cut out the love affair
Somehow that seemed to cut out nearly
everything else. But they kept the cir
Gus performer, because everybody knew
about him and the title they'd made up
for the picture before they realized
how different everything would have
to be, they kept that, too, because The
Dawn of nderstanding' sounded such
an ideally sympathetic part for Bessie
Love"-
"Out Of your own mouth" we cried.
GAS a witness for the defence, my
friend''-
"All the same, you're awfully un-
just"
unjust? Why, Pm haunted ruin
of injustice, haunted by all the lowell
ness that might have been! And if this
really fresh and pretty little picture
were the only one that hardened to
the cry of Sweetness, sweetness! Give
| US sugar-plum!' But they all OBJ
ligingly stuff the throat Of that cry
with sweetness and sugar till it turns
to a despairing, In mercy's name, dill
picket Then they all run hither and
yon after dill pickles. and for every
one of the genuine article they manu-
facturc a hundred limitations, so that
the country is flooded with fake vamps
and fake crime and the half-articu-
! late, wholly misleading public cry says,
why are movies all alike 2 and stays
at home"
"They have to come back" snapped
the Movie Fan.
: "They come back, after having given
the producers an awful scare. Which
results only in the manufacture of
sugar-plums sweeter than ever. When
think of all the uses that the finest,
truest, humanest talents are put to in
movie sympatheticness my soul sick
ems for hero to pull down his house
on top of his family or mother to
murder her young babe"
"You always we're an idealist!" But
with these words there crept over the
! face of the Movie Fan the flush Of one
about to blaspheme what he most
honors. 81 don't ask for thunder and
| lightning like that. But sometimes
| I--I--you remember what you said
about Sue and her mere human imper-
| fection? I'd like sometimes to see