PUTTING "PEP" INTO HISTORY.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3145, 27 November 1922, Page 2

PUTTING "PEP" INTO HISTORY.

(By G. A. Atkinson). Strange stories reach me of a new American twelve-reel photoplay called "When Knighthood was in Flower," presented in New York. It seems to have been designed to advertise the considerable charms of Miss Marion Davis, and to infuse into English history the ingredient known in American snlm circles as "pep." Perhaps the humor of it is not wholly unintentional. Some aspects of the ,Tudor period, with which the film deals, are certainly not immune from satire. Miss Davies has discovered that Mary Tudor, sister to Henry the Eighth, was the original irresistible flapper. On this discovery the theme is based. Henry, played with Falstaffian unction by Mr I ami Harding (who must surely have pulled America's leg in this matter), wishes to marry Mary to the senile and ...tottery King Louis tho Twelfth of Prance. Mary goes to -her lover, Charles Brandon (Duke of Suffolk), who has been ordered by Henry into exile, and asks him to take her as his wife. Brandon refuses to allow a woman in the ship, so Mary borrows one of his old suits and poses as his voung brother. The aim of the thing, apparently, is to have Miss Davies swashbuckling through English history in boy's clothes, with all the obvious adventures . and misadventures that may arise therefrom. Cardinal Wolsoy seems to be a crea- .: tion who ought to be stifled in his own '•'brand of underwear. Henry, who does most of his own lackey work in the •film, accompanies Wolscy on an unannounced visit to Mary. She is in bed with one arm uncovered. The King, to Wolsey's obvious chagrin. exclaims: "Coyer up that ai'm, hussy!" which is possibly the last remark that the spectator would expect from Henrv the Eighth. There is a tailor in the production, a kind of mediaeval Leslie Hensou, even to the slogan. "Oh, for heaven's sake. . . !" he exclaims at intervals. Mary pettishly throws tho tailor's samples all over the room. Henry comes in, dodges a textile missile, and looks aghast at the tailor struggling under rolls of cloth. Out of the heap appears tho tailor's head and the plaintive catch-phrase, "Oh, for heaven's sake!" Louis of France, cast in the Fred Kinney school, smacks his lips over the prospect of marriage to the beautiful Mary. Half a dozen footmen are required to assist him in mounting or dismounting a horse, scenes that provoke a Chaplinesque riot. Another scene shows him in bed. gazing into a hand mirror and dabbing his cheeks in the best keep-that-schoolgirl-complcxion style. Ho rises, disclosing a withered limb, climbs into an extraordinary garment, and goes into the next apartment, where his sou is discovered kissing the King's bride. Louis succumbs to the apoplectic fit long overdue. Most of all, I understand, is a scene that shows Mary and Charles favoring Henry with a dame, executed more in tho traditions of Montmartro than of the Middle Ages. Perhaps it was intended to show the historical associations of the "shimmy." Most extraordinary of all is a rumor that the owners of the film intend to cut out no fewer than four reels of this comic stuff before it is shown in England! Why? Why should the British public bo deprived of a really good laugh?