Owing to the holidays we were unable to say a word of praise last week for "Three Faces East" which was a bully good secret service picture. That sort of thing is apt to be either very obvious or very much involved in movie form, but the almost perfect acting of Clive Brooke and Jette Gondal made this famous stage success tremendously exciting.

This week the Fenway is offering "Steel Preferred" with a cast ranging all the way from Hobart Bosworth to Ben Turpin. Just how the latter leaked into the picture is still more or less of a mystery. Mayhap he went to sleep on the set and woke to find himself in the film. Another point which has never seamed quite plain to us is just why so many people think that Turpin is screamingly funny because the poor man has trouble with the focus of his eyes. It has always seemed to us that he managed to entertain in spite of this misfortune.

Vere Reynolds and William Royd are not nearly so effective as they were in "The Road to Yesterday." Charlie Murray walks away with the picture in a very silly drunken burlesque. Boyd's pleasant boyishness is deadened by steel furnaces and all those dandy things we used to explore on Chemistry excursions. In fact the whole picture recalls those happy if undignified romps through founderies and sulphuric acid plants. We've wondered since how such industries could go on with all of First Year Chemistry playing hide-and-go-seek among the Bessemers.

"The Last Edition" which, for some reason unknown to us was included on the same bill stars the portly Ralph Lewis, who has been everything from a good mail man to a bad boy scout, as foreman of a pressroom. We quarrel with this picture on grounds of professional honesty. When a press room no matter what press room assumes some such motto as Love, Honor and Purity then someone is lying and ought to have his mouth washed out with soap. The type setter's quartet broadcasting "Sweet Adcline" before the evening's work, for all the world like a lot of Big Brothers from Station WEEL was about as indigestible a thought as the movies have put over in some time. If the wrecking crew down stairs ever did such a thing there would be just one reason for it and a lot of funny looking headlines the next day.