User Reviews

Pictures with the Kalem brand have a quality in a marked degree. They make exceptionally able use of the material that is given to the scenario department. For seeing not only in this picture a peculiarly clever working-up of perhaps a kind of situation that often opens a flat picture, but finding cleverness in many Kalems, one comes to suspect that it is a part of Kalem work. Either they choose their authors with more than usual discrimination on Twenty-Third Street, or they retouch their scripts with pains. The result is pleasing. This picture is a two-part detective offering in a series that is being played by Ruth Roland, Cleo Ridgeley and a cast that is above the average. It is fresh and keeps its end up while it is before the spectator. But take away from it the peculiar way in which the spectator's mind is worked upon by its preparing him to appreciate the content of its situations when it is ready to dig out for him, the picture would be just as flat as some others of a few years ago that we can recall. For example, take one of its characters, Darby, how vapid and lacking in natural interest he is. But so skillfully is he kept important that he even bores us into wondering how he came to be so weak-kneed and under the thumb of villainous Marmaduke. On account of this, when Darby begins to tell his story we are all at once interested. This crafty wetting of our interest in Darby before letting us into his secret is the best thing in the picture; it is distinctly good. It is only one interest among many and the mind is not blatantly directed to it. One is led to think the picture a story of a girl's adventure and her rescue by the society girl detective. These are in themselves interesting and being well acted and clearly told would serve alone. Here, in the foreground of this man Darby and his story, the effect they make is heightened, and they become more interesting by association with Darby's more important story. But, if the author, Hamilton Smith, or the Kalem scenario department, has taken trouble with the script, the producer, James W. Horne, has as clearly taken pains to have the action natural and convincing and has succeeded. Ruth Roland plays, as well as usual, the girl detective; Cleo Ridgeley is charming as tlie heroine; Thomas Lingham does able work as the villain; Knute Rahm succeeds as the scapegoat; Anna Lingham has a small, but well acted role, in the heroine's mother; Edward Clisbie, as the police chief, makes the picture's only laugh, which comes just at the end. The staging and photography are both commendable. - The Moving Picture World, February 13, 1915