Cinema: Again Arbuckle?

Ten years ago, famed Funnyman Roscoe Conkling ("Fatty'') Arbuckle was tried for manslaughter after being found in a rumpled hotel room with the corpse of an obscure cinemactress named Virginia Rappe. He was acquitted. But, because many suspicious persons thought he might have caused the death of Cinemactress Rappe by attacking her, perhaps with a beer bottle, no cinema producers dared antagonize their audiences by hiring Funnyman Arbuckle. Funnyman Arbuckle tried a vaudeville tour, a Hollywood nightclub. When the nightclub failed, he got a job writing "gags" for Mack Sennett, has more recently, as "William Goodrich," been an assistant director for Educational Film Exchanges.

Last March Photoplay (monthly) printed an article about Funnyman Arbuckle called "Just Let Me Work," quoted the chief Arbuckle ambition: "I want to go back to the screen. I think I can entertain and gladden the people. . . ." Editor James R. Quirk of Photoplay gave a radio talk, asked his listeners whether they thought Funnyman Arbuckle should be permitted to return to the screen under his own name. Last week, in the July Photoplay James R. Quirk gave the answer. He had received 3,000 letters from people who thought Arbuckle should be permitted to resume cinemacting; among the letter-writers were the foreman of the first Arbuckle jury and San Francisco District Attorney Matthew Brady who prosecuted him.

A few people did not want Fatty Arbuckle to return. One was Canon William Sheafe Chase, who said: "I have no personal animosity toward this man but think it very unwise to have him at this time to what I consider a very im nity." portant Wrote moral Editor influence Quirk: in the "No one commu accused Arbuckle of making a picture wasn't clean."

The New Pictures

Smart Money (Warner Brothers) is a fast, factual and exciting cinema about a Greek gambler named, after several real ones, Nick.* He gets started in a small-town barber shop, running a poker game on the side. His customers so respect his poker playing that they stake him for a big-town game. Ingenuous Nick gets cheated on his first excursion; the next time he gets punched in the face. The third time he wins, and afterward uses a big-town barber shop as a blind for his elaborate gambling house. Especially fond of blondes, he pats a manicurist's leg and asks her for advice, keeps a blonde canary in a cage. He warms up his luck by rubbing a blackamoor's head, a hunchback's shoulder, the lapels of his own loud clothing. When the police send a lady to get evidence on his gambling-house, Nick gives her a drink, then kicks her from behind. The picture grows a little less lively toward the end. Knowing that Nick trusts all blondes, the police use one to trap him. Nick is last seen on the platform of a train, with an overcoat over his handcuffed wrists, offering two to one that he will be out in five years.