TOL'ABLE DAVID
starring Richard Barthelmess, Gladys Hulette
PICTURE PLAY MAGAZINE
March, 1922
Don't you sometimes hold your breath when you hear that your favorite featured player has been made a star? So many actors who have done such marvelous work so long as they remained under the management and directions of some one like Griffith have become mere walking automatons when they started out with the "own company" and their name in electric lights. I never loved a dear gazelle in the form of a charming ordinary actor but somebody or other had to go and make a star of him and spoil everything. But all this croaking is by way of saying that you have nothing to fear in the first picture which presents Richard Barthelmess as a star. "Tol'able David" is worthy of the best work of this singularly imaginative and magnetic young actor.
It is a simple story by Joseph Hergesheimer about a boy whom circumstances force to act as a man; the head of a surly family of Kentucky mountaineers. Its incidents - the mountain feud, the pretty girl on the wrong side of the quarrel, the brutal rival - are not unknown to the screen, but they have been developed with a sincerity and force which we wish were more familiar. And Barthelmess clings to his simplicity with a fidelity that makes you realize his former restraint was not all due to the guiding hand of Mr. Griffith. Gladys Hulette also catches this tone as the mountain-girl sweetheart. The picture is in seven reels, but it sweeps along without a moment of that let-down which comes with padding.
For more information, see "Tol'able David" as our "Feature of the Month"
Video source: Kino