The Crimson Playgoer

For some reason the current melodrama at the Keith-Albee theatre entitled "Framed" fails to click. The plot has all the tapestries and bindings of original research; a little girl, who works in a Broadway Night-Club has a grudge against the police inspector who bears the colorful name of "Butch" McArthur. "Butch" has a son who succumbs to the lure of this revenge-harboring maiden; said maiden therefore has a splendid opportunity to send the revenge out of the harbor; nevertheless, she falls in love with the son and a happy reconciliation, consisting in putting several gangsters "on the spot," ends the picture. But for some reason it doesn't click.

Miss Evelyn Brent plays the role of the cabaret hostess. She twitters up and down the gamut of human emotion, from smiles and choking sobs to playing fast and loose with a whole, orchestra and the doorman thrown in for good measure. Only she, a detective, and the audience know that underneath it all she's a good girl. And despite the novelty of plot and histrionics, the picture doesn't get over.

Also the scenery and background are unusual: a sumptuous night club, sentimental ballads, whizzing taxicabs with mounted machine guns, desperados infesting the family entrance of the night club, cruel hardboiled policemen and imported dialogue consisting of "coppers," "rackete" "third-degrees" and the rest. This film is entirely different from anything the movies have yet done but its novelty is unimpressive. The vaudeville filling in the bill represents the only logical reason yet discovered for the creation of the "talkies."