"BUSINESS BEFORE PLEASURE."
The return of _Abe Potash_ and _Mawruss Perlmutter_ to London is not
an event to be regarded indifferently. The light-hearted pair have
evidently been through some anxious times. _Rosie Potash_ can never have
been a very easy woman to live with. She has not improved. And now that
she has infected _Ruth Perlmutter_ with her morbid jealousies the alert
and as yet unbroken _Mawruss_ begins to know something of what his
long-suffering, not to say occasionally abject, partner, _Abe_, has had
to endure these many years.
It was bad enough in the dress business. But now they have gone into
films it is indefinitely worse. Every reasonable person must know that
you can't produce really moving pictures without an immense amount of
late office hours, dining and supping out and that sort of thing, a
fact which the _Rosies_ and _Ruths_ of this world can't be expected
to appreciate. So that it would be as well, think the ingenuous
_entrepreneurs_, if _The Fatal Murder_ were, so far as the ladies' parts
are concerned, cast from members of the two households. Besides, what
an excellent way of keeping the money in the family. However _The Fatal
Murder_ is a dud; _Rosie_ and _Ruth_ are not the right shape; and film
acting, with the necessary pep, is not a thing you can just acquire by
wishing so.
What is wanted, says the voluble young hustler in the firm, who
alone seems to know anything of the business, is real actresses as
distinguished from members of the directors' families, and above all a
good vampire. A vampire is the very immoral and under-dressed type of
woman that wrecks hearts and homes, and without which no film with a
high moral purpose is conceivable. You must have shadows to throw up the
light. And on this principle all the uplift and moral instruction of
that potent instrument of grace, the cinematograph, is based--a fact
which will not have escaped the notice of cinema-goers.
When _Rita Sismondi_ appears in an evil Futurist black-and-white gown by
Viola you can tell at once she is the goods. But naturally _Abe's_ first
thought is, "What will _Rosie_ say?" His second, shared by _Mawruss_:
"Hang _Rosie_! We shall both like this lady." Finances are not
flourishing, but the crooked manager of the very unbusinesslike bank
that is financing the P. and P. Film Co. harbours designs on the virtue
of _Rita_, who has this commodity in a measure unusual with film
vampires (or usual, I forget which), and is just a slightly adventurous
prude out for a good time. He accordingly advances more money for _The
Guilty Dollar_ on condition that _Rita_ be engaged, and yet more money
on condition that she be not fired by any machinations of jealous wives.
_Rosie_, indeed, says a good deal when she turns up at a rehearsal and
finds the vampire clad in the third of a gown hazardously suspended
on her gracious shoulders by bead straps, and _Mawruss_ and _Abe_
demonstrating how in their opinion the kissing scenes should be
conducted so as to make a really notable production. However, the
vampire's film vices make the success of the company, and her private
virtues bring all to a happy ending.
The story need hardly concern us. It is not plausible, which matters
nothing at all. Mr. YORKE and Mr. LEONARD are the essential outfit, and
it seems to me they are better than ever. One simply _has_ to laugh,
louder and oftener than is seemly for a self-respecting Englishman. No
doubt their authors, Messrs. GLASS and GOODMAN, give them plenty of good
things to say, but it is the astonishing finish and precision of their
technique which make their work so pleasant to watch. If it throws into
awkward relief the amateurishness of some of their associates that can't
be helped. Miss VERA GORDON'S _Rosie_ is a good performance, and Miss
JULIA BRUNS, the vampire, seemed to me to make with considerable skill
and subtlety a real character (within the limits allowed by the farcical
nature of the scheme) out of what might easily have been uninvitingly
crude.