The Season's Players
Skinner, R. Dana
{This is the last of a series of three general review articles by Mr. Skinner on the ig26-27 theatrical season.—The Editors) THE New York stage, oddly enough, is suffering from a plethora of...
...Alice Brady has gained enormously in repose and inner strength—and only her last revival of The Thief was a success...
...The ever satisfactory Dudley Digges, with his inimitable use of telling business, has also graced the Guild boards throughout the dramatic year which has just drawn to a close...
...Pauline Lord has done magnificently, and each of her plays has failed...
...We come, then, to a place reserved for one of the finest and bravest experiments made in recent years—Eva Le Gallienne's repertory on Fourteenth Street...
...Where is the repertory theatre she should have in New York...
...The engaging quality of Claiborne Foster still remains—potential...
...The stage, as some one has said, is the place for good actresses and great actors...
...Flops," or else interminably long runs—and little or nothing added to the artistic stature of those who, at best, have only a few years in which to give of their worth...
...these two points we must regretfully admit...
...Mary Fowler playing seconds, except in Sam Abramovich, when under a capable director she could be giving a distinctly rare quality to leads...
...Ann Harding in a bit of melodramatic hokum...
...There are not enough good plays, and certainly not enough good directors, to use half of the material at hand—particularly the younger material, in whose vitality, freshness of approach and willingness to work the stage has a rich treasure...
...But in giving us many views of the art of Beatrice Terry and the delectable Josephine Hutchinson, in sticking courageously to an announced purpose, in giving plays of substance and worth, and in her own work as an artist of sincere devotion, Miss Le Gallienne won the spontaneous applause and gratitude of every theatre-lover in New York...
...Helen Hayes, it would seem, was bound forever to the magic of her Maggie Wylie—and who could find a more distinguished and poignant bit of artistry on the stage...
...I have at hand a list of more than two dozen actresses, each of whom has shown qualities of rare interest during this season...
...Then, to everyone's astonishment, he gave a magnificently virile rendering of Marc Anthony, marred only at moments by a burring accent...
...Jane Cowl and Ethel Barrymore have given delightful performances in quite unworthy though successful plays...
...Until an actor brings to his work the fire of genius, it is difficult for him to win the popular fancy...
...Without her, the season had merit...
...Otis Skinner is not being used in New York at all...
...Pedro de Cordoba did his best acting of years in the early scenes of Sam Abramovich—and the play itself lasted one week...
...It is really only at the Theatre Guild and the Neighborhood Playhouse that actors have been permitted to grow from month to month—Lynn Fontanne giving a gorgeous series of portraits at the former, and Dorothy Sands displaying her amazing versatility at the latter...
...There are a dozen roles, classic and modern, in which Miss Yurka might have thrilled us under a repertory system...
...Peggy Wood—than whom none is more charming or arch—has been in and out of everything that was meaningless...
...This season, like last, saw her talents wasted on a vastly commonplace play...
...that the men of her company were not exceptional...
...Margaret Anglin gave us, in Electra, the only truly superb performance of the year— but for two crowded performances only...
...That Miss Le Gallienne made the mistake of directing all plays herself...
...And so on, name after name, goes the list of a wasted year...
...Nor have the actresses fared much better...
...Neither a Theatre GuQd compromise of alternating weeks, nor a Hampden debacle into long runs, this was the one real repertory theatre of the season, with two, three or even more plays a week, offering a surpassing opportunity to actors and public alike...
...Sylvia Field cavorting in Broadway...
...In the nature of things, the younger actresses are more conspicuous than the young actors...
...Glenn Hunter—merely to take names at random— has done nothing new...
...Miss Walker has more important things to give than the lispings of Lorelei...
...But are there no new channels through which she can bring the beauty of her mind to audiences ? Ruth Gordon, happily, made Saturday's Children a means of overcoming past mannerisms...
...But he, too, has yielded to the long-run temptation, appearing only in Caponsacchi since the prompt failure of The Immortal Thief which opened his season...
...with her, it had the distinction of high purpose...
...Walter Hampden, of course, has the advantage of his own theatre...
...Guild methods and plays also placed Alfred Lunt on the pinnacle of a rich and masterly season...
...Mary Ellis appearing for a few brief moments—gorgeous moments— in The Humble, and then fading into The Crown Prince...
...The delightfully sympathetic Ralph Morgan is no further ahead than five years ago...
...Blanche Yurka— whose Gina in The Wild Duck made stage history—has been acting eight months or so in a supremely unimportant play, The Squall...
...To name them all would simply be tedious...
...Clara Eames, in spite of her protest against Guild methods, did some of her best work this season, gaining mightily in warmth...
...Compare such a result with the fate of equally talented actors in the commercial theatre...
...Katherine Cornell has been Green Hatting the entire season—to the infinite loss of real theatregoers...
...But a few poignant facts emerge...
...Aline McMahon in a brief though unforgettable scene in Spread Eagle...
...June Walker, by an amazing tour de force, made ladies as well as gentlemen prefer blondes—but, after all, why shouldn't they...
...They showed us that Elliott Cabot was an actor to be taken seriously, and that Earle Larrimore is on the threshold of real distinction...
...Under the Guild management, Margalo Gillmore has also emerged as an emotional actress of real importance and poignant fire, and Laura Hope Crews has won a new wreath all her own for making The Silver Cord plausible...
...Above all, they brought to our attention the work of the most sterling character actor of the day—Edward G. Robinson, whose least impersonation reaches the power of fine art...
...Basil Rathbone and Arthur Wontner—a new light from England—had a few fine moments in the ill-famed Captive, and nothing else of distinction...
...Dorothy Burgess deserting delightfully to musical comedy: these are but a few more of the discouragements to a fine acting tradition fostered by the commercial method of presenting plays...
...Helen Gahagan has been frittering away her time in the charming costumes of Rose Trelawny when she might have been growing as an emotional or even tragic actress...
...Skinner on the ig26-27 theatrical season.—The Editors) THE New York stage, oddly enough, is suffering from a plethora of talent...
...James Rennie's season would have been meaningless if a last-minute chance had not projected him into the Players' revival of Julius Caesar...
...But even allowing for this distinction, the talent on both sides is abundant, waiting only to be molded and drawn out by the masterly hand of such an expert and experienced director as Guthrie McClintic...
Vol. 6 • July 1927 • No. 12
