Word: half-wit
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Yolanda. Marion Davies follows her first spectacular picture, When Knighthood Was in Flower, with a cinema out of the same wardrobe. It is. a medieval tale, highly costumed -a Princess of Burgundy, her cruel father, the half-wit son of the French King. Miss Davies manages two roles. She weeps artistically over a handsome suitor, but the story leaves you calm. Despite great pictorial beauty and a squad of villains, the picture has no drive. It is a gorgeous military parade, with armies in armor and battlements for lighter relief...
...which a man repeats one motion over and over, has proved a powerful agent for fostering sub-normal intelligence--and strangely enough, really puts a premium on under-developed minds. The normal or highly-educated man does not perform mechanical tasks as expertly as the half-wit, so the latter flourishes and multiplies...
...fresher is the material around which Mr. Henderson writes his "Unseen Genius." The village half-wit who reads voraciously, with his doting mother and the stupid, brutal father, on whom he finally bends the horsewhip, is a perennially appearing subject. But here, too, there are bright spots. Mr. Henderson's local color is well painted; his realism (although I draw the line at mention of "Aunt Hitty's old entrails" being "stirred to the depths"--especially after Mr. Gowdy's remark that Jim Gowan's rival had not "a white spot in 'im from the guts up") is undeniably effective...