New-York tribune., 1922-08-02
On the Screen
prisoner of Zenda'' Splendid
Picture at the Astor; 'sHu-
man Hearts, at Central
BY Harriette Underhill

/
"The Prisoner Of zenda,' Rex In
grams picture, which opened at the
Astor Theater Monday night, seems to
us an exceptionally fine piece of work,
but this review IS not going to be as
enthusiastic as it would have been IL
we had rushed dowr town after the
picture was over and had done our
writing Monday night. This is our
usual mode Of procedure, but the man
agement made the mistake of advertis-
ing the fact that motion pictures Of the
crowds going in the theater would be
taken, and after that it was impossible
to get any one into the thcater. All Of
the celebrities stayed outside to have
their motion pictures taken, and all
Of the other people stayed to look at
! the celebrities. At $3.50 we were the
! only person in the theater, though, of
course, we have no way of knowing
just how many good critics and true
went down in the jam outside. Some
how that picture-outside- -the-the
| idea did not seem such good one
to US.
And then there was prologue with
Baroness Norka Rouskaya and Eva
Clark dancing and singing, and the
picture just got we'll under way when
there was an intermiss ion, so that it
was nearly midnight before the final
curtain fell.
On the way out we heard people say
ing that the picture had dragged in
spots, that the trouble was in the see
mario, and after turning this over in
our mind we decided that It was true.
bal &LoI
the picture needed speeding up was
because Of the excellent acting and the
fine types which Mr.. Ingram has chosen
for his version of Anthony Hopes fas-
cinating story. If you become inter-
ested enough in the individual scenes
| in picture you forget to ask whether
the plot is moving along as it should.
And only now we realize that the pic
| ture play is not nearly so full Of ad-
venture as 1t might have been. .
However, it is a delightful picture,
and, as we said before, we felt no lack
of this as we watched the tale unfold
with Lewis Stone as King Rudolf and
also his counterpart, Rudolf Rassen-
dyll; with Alice Terry as Princess
Flavia, with Robert Edeson, Stuart
Holmes and Ramon Navarro as Colonel
Sapt, Black Michael and Rupert Of
Hentzau, and with Barbara La Mare
as Antoinette de Mauban. We must
not forget, either, the performance of
Malcolm McGregor as Count Won Tar
| lenheim. His was not a large part, but
he played it splendidly This McGre-
gor is not in the least movie hero
type, and he is new to us, but he has a
compelling personality that makes
whatever he does seem interesting,
Among the women we were much i'm
pressed with Barbara La Mare. an
~ To - ti,,lI
ing she is the most effective of all the
adventures types on the screen, and
she is better than beautiful
Alice Terry is sweetly dignified as
is magnificent as Rudolf In spite Of
the fact that we had always fancied
Rudolf much bigger and younger, Mr..
| Stone won our heart in one minute.
SO much So in fact. that we shall find
it hard to forgive Mr.. Ingram for not
acting like director and having q
happy ending. Mr.. Ingram believes in
following the original story, it seems,
unhappy as she was in "The Four
Horsemen" and again in this new pic
ture.
AS Colonel Sapt, Robert Edeson does
the best work we ever have seen
| him do, and the same may be said of
| Stuart Holmes as Black Michael.
Ramon Navarro is the young man we
have heard referred to as "handsomer
than Valentino" He is such differ
ent type that it is difficult to decide
this, but as Rupert he certainly gives
a finished and colorful perform
ance. He was especially fine in the
scenes of the sword play where Rudolf
vanquished three villains. Others,
whose names were not on the program,
contributed a great deal to the pic