Every day the newspapers carry headlines announcing that a father and his children are reunited after a separation of 25 years, and the accompanying photographs show the loving couple entwined in a close embrace. But despite the value of such a story to the newspapers, Hollywood has decreed that the reunion cannot take place so harmoniously.

So John Barrymore, in "Long Lost Father" the garrulous rake, the charming outwitter of bookies, must first help his daughter, Helen Chandler out of difficulty before she is willing to recognize him. Hollywood, after showing us Barrymore in almost every role that it has hidden up its sleeve, seems at last to have cast him in a part that suits his dashing air perfectly. Not that the plot is anything new or that he wears the uniform of a Russian general to set off his profile. But the carefree, pleasantly daring and above all adventurous (by inference if not by actual portrayal) should capture the heart of any Barrymore devotes.

There is the uncomfortable meeting of father and daughter in the lawyer's office, there is the disowning of the father by the daughter, and there is the final reunion after he helps her out of trouble. No more than that is the plot. But that is enough to make Barrymore pleasant.

The other picture "Journal of a Crime" might well go without mention. Even the acting of Adolph Menjou cannot relieve the horror of Ruth Chatterton's meaning and groaning. Like an Alexandrine line "it drags its slow length along.