Word: actor
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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Excess Baggage. Among cinemaddicts there is a tendency to confuse their aversion to a character with their critical judgment of the actor's exposition. Particularly is this true in the case of William Haines. This cinemactor invariably plays the obnoxious, precocious whiffet who upsets plans, causes heartaches by his wilfulness. In this piece he is the smartaleck vaudevillager whose wife becomes a famed cinemactress while he is left in comparative obscurity. He wins her back from a sleek cinemactor (Ricardo Cortez) after slap-stickery and problem-solving...
...piece is nice entertainment, yet all encomia of The Jazz Singer and The Singing Fool must be leavened by one fact, in justice to cinemactors, legitimactors: to play a part is one thing, to play a part which has been written around an actor's career is something else again...
...instead of "ad-libbing" from the newspapers. The square jawed hero, for example, is a lightweight instead of the usual heavyweight. He is not a facsimile of Benny Leonard, Sammy Mandell or any other celebrity. He is simply Bobby Murray, a type instead of a borrowed headline. Actor Richard Taber makes the part into a distinct, albeit dull personality. Actor John Meehan does even better, much better, as Peter Murray, iron-grey manager-father...
...plot consists of Father Murray's struggle to keep Son Murray from "throwing" the championship for the sake of an expert brunette (Actress Suzanne Caubaye) who gets her orders from a masterminded nightclub gangster (Actor Robert Gleckler of Broadway fame). Father Murray has the assistance of an Honest Home Girl (Actress Harriet MacGibbon) and a High-Minded Sportswriter...
...called Bellflower; actually he was Russel Grouse, columnist of the New York Evening Post, making his demure debut on the stage. For the antics of Columnist Grouse all critics had a pretty word to say. Walter Winchell of the New York Evening Graphic called him SourCrouse while the Actor-Journalist's wife, Alison Smith, able critic for the New York World, paid her husband the neatest compliment...