HAWTHORNE, U.S.A.
starring Wallace Reid and Lila Lee
PHOTOPLAY
February, 1920
I don't care for this, in comparison to Wallace Reid's recent
vehicles, but his must not be a gainsaying of certain merits that
the piece possesses, of Wallace Reid's jovial, reckless abilities,
or of Paramount's very fine production. It simply does not measure
up to the very high standard Reid's producers have set for him
and themselves in the last few months. Douglas Fairbanks played
it on the stage, invested it with his indisputable charm and his
inimitable personality, and probably would have played it a lot
better in pictures. At least, it would have been a lot better
for Fairbanks than the things he has done of late. James Cruze
has also much better directing -- that is to say, he has been
more adroit, more subtle, and more original. As a straight-running
version of the escapades of that impertinent young American who
breaks the back of a revolution, and permits the people to have
a republic only after he has made them permit him to have his
princess, Mr. Cruze's effort is a rapid, freehand succession of
brisk sketches. Lila Lee, as Princess Irma, is the old Lila Lee
of much attempt and small accomplishment, rather than the infinitely
quaint and charming -- the new Lila Lee discovered by Cecil DeMille
in "Male and Female." Such fine actors as Tully Marshall,
Edwin Stevens, and Theodore Roberts, and such an interesting young
person as Harrison Ford, are to be found in the cast.