THE TURMOIL
Starring George Hackathorne
PHOTOPLAY
August, 1924
This Booth Tarkington story of family relationship in a small middle Western town had interesting possibilities. The family is dominated by a self-made captain of industry and comes to disintegration through the corrosion typical of an ill-adjusted household. Director Hobart Henley succeeds passably. He has one big scene where the head of the house enters the barbershop oblivious to the tragic death of his son.
THE TURMOIL
Starring George Hackathorne
MOTION PICTURE CLASSIC
August, 1924
Booth Tarkington's story of American family life among the nouveau riche, which he called "The Turmoil," is filmed with excellent appreciation for its humanities and realities by Univeral -- a company that also filmed "The Flirt." Like that picture, this one presents a cross-sectional analysis of family relationship -- and presents it in a manner recognizably real. But is is an improvement on "The Flirt" because it gets down to the core of its subject matter.
It all revolves around a father of the one-hundred-percent, go-getting American type -- a man who would mold his family in general, and his three sons in particular, after himself. His pet slogan is"I can make two blades of grass grow where only one grew before." Rebellion is expressed early -- and it carries pathos and drama. The touches are occasionally whimsical, and these emphasize the humanities. When the father loses two of his boys -- one thru death, he acknowledges to the remaining son that he can work out his own destiny. The father is humanized as a result.
The director builds the story well and touches real depths of feeling when the father learns of his son's death. This is a finely executed scene. It is compact and moving and gripping in its revelation of conflict. There is a goddess in the machine. She brings part of the house tumbling to disaster in her catty behavior toward her relatives and rivals.
The picture is most competently acted by Emmett Corrigan as the father and George Hackathorne as the boy allowed to live his own life in his own way. The scenes are intimate -- and the story carries a quality that makes it exceptionally human. We recommend it.