The Diamond Mystery

Special feature picture in two parts. The fine quality of the photography is the first thing that will be noticed in this offering. The acting of the players is thus given a perfect medium and both reels are filled with many admirable things, bits of character drawing, flashes of insight with the intelligent setting forth of situations that makes a story credible. The average spectator will like it very much; because there is no dragging in it; it is full of life from beginning to end and it is also full of big things, such as the crowded grandstand of a race track. Now and then, it shows carelessness in production. For instance, when Phelps (Herbert L. Barry) examines the bottles in the laboratory of Moore (Charles Kent), the inventor of the fictitious diamond formula, he is supposed to be calling on the girl (Leah Baird); but he never sits down; he comes in, examines the things while talking to her and then hurries out. Charles Kent's facial expression is at times wonderful. Mary Maurice plays his wife and shows how the situation bites her. Leah Baird plays a charming girl with creditable smoothness. Courtenay Foote fills with dignity a conventional part, the detective. The others, Earle Williams, E.K. Lincoln, Charles Edwards, Joseph Baker, Rogers Lytton and Frank Mason deserve mention. - The Moving Picture World, July 26, 1913