The Play and Screen

...Yet the commercial instinct of the modern trader and salesman is played to the hilt of its satire...

...The danger lies in the readiness of any audience to grant a certain reality to the satirical mask...

...Moreover, its main theme, which is the triangle of adultery (why should one be expected to use pretty names to describe such situations...

...Potiphar is, of course, the main comedy character, ably played by Ferdinand Gottschalk...

...For these adroit suggestions, Joseph is placed in command of the economic organization of Egypt...

...At the Liberty Theatre...

...In other words, the Grandeur screen has about the same proportions as the ordinary stage, permitting the filming of large groups and full-width stage effects with an entirely new perspective...

...Grandeur Films IN HAPPY DAYS, William Fox presents the first complete picture on the new enlarged film, which he has christened Grandeur...

...Thus all ends happily...

...But certainly this one character does not compensate for the parade of vice, free love, illegitimacy, obstetrics and what-not which somewhat overcrowds the action of one evening...

...Of Mrs...

...The fact that the director resorts to the old triangle for his improvised play is meant to satirize the imaginative impotence of theatrical directors in general...

...It is well to say at the outset that the general tone and temper of the play are less iconoclastic than one would expect...

...The only refreshing moments are when Reginald Owen as the volunteer (and real) husband is on the stage...

...Fiske should select this play as her second repertory vehicle of the season, and just why Hatcher Hughes should be one of its authors are mysteries for the mind-readers to solve...

...He recalls the seven-year cycles of famine and plenty, falls back on his ditch-digging formula, shows Pharaoh how, by irrigation and by storing the surplus grain of the years of plenty, he can create a valuable monopoly in times of famine...

...But the essential crudity with which these problems are stated, the unbelievable accumulation within twelve hours of distasteful situations and the dramatic ineptitude with which they are strung together make the play quite worthless and generally offensive...

...The core of the evening is supposed to rest on this plot within a plot, and everything depends on the extent of your willing credulity...

...In the present instance, Mr...

...is such a trite and outworn formula of the centinental comedy stage, that its refurbishing is an insult to audience intelligence...

...He hurdles the last obstacle by winning over the high priest and his cohorts with the suggestion that the grain can be sold from the temples and thus bring a priestly revenue...

...Both facts would seem to disqualify him from writing the unconvincing rubbish which fills most of the present play...

...For the rest, the comedy follows the obvious lines...

...At first nonplused, Joseph finally seizes this as his chance for master-salesmanship...

...The superintendent sees riches for himself in these ideas, and Joseph is saved and made prison manager...

...It is a rather common superstition on the part of Broadway producers that, if a play "points a moral," it makes no difference what material is used...

...It goes rather farther than the humanizing of historical idols in the current mode of biography...

...Fiske's own work, which always manages to be important no matter what her vehicle, it seems to me that, in the reserve and poise of Mrs...

...There follows a frantic exchange of abuse between the Russian director and the theatre management...

...Tyler combine to form a brief sermon on "how to handle your husband, son, daughter and all the people with whom they become entangled...

...This time one Bertram Bloch has taken the biblical story of Joseph in Egypt and turned it into a satirical comedy of racial traits...

...But Grandeur developments will undoubtedly bring new and important technique into talking pictures, and add still more to the scope of the director during the development of this infant art...

...It has as little relation to actual historical figures as Gilbert's libretto of The Mikado to the realities of Japan...

...In the play under review here the endless patience, the guiding wit and charm, and the ultimate wisdom of Mrs...

...Nor, when he appeals to his God, is there the slightest hint of irony or insincerity...

...Neris, his wife, is the trouble-maker who ends Joseph's peaceful existence and has him thrown into prison...

...At the Roxy Theatre...

...The initial idea is good, but its working out, in spite of many attempts at subtle satire, is so slow and cumbersome and unpersuasive that even the capital clowning of Reginald Owen cannot save it from boredom...

...At the Booth Theatre...

...The converse superstition is also held-that the moral of a play makes very little difference provided all situations are handled with "good taste...

...When Potiphar is disconsolate at losing forever so valuable an overseer for his personal estates, Joseph recommends his brother Benjamin for the job...

...But to double the triangle is hardly a way of showing the superior intelligence of the playwright himself...

...But with this, Mr...

...Modern biographers are at least in search of relative truth, whereas the Erskine formula has only one object in view- modern satire under the mask of ancient names...

...Through a mistake on the theatrical call-board, neither actors nor stage hands are ready for the performance...

...As to Mrs...

...He is very near that fatal thing, a whole show in himself-fatal because it covers up the worst defects in a playwright's script, and makes one tolerate perfectly worthless trash...

...He has only partly surmounted this danger by the underlying touch of sincerity I have noted...

...On the other hand, as the name of a second author, Alan Williams, is added to the program, it is possible that most of the worst features of the play can very likely be attributed to the rewriting process which is just now the principal bane of Broadway...

...Then, satire must also have animation and quick point...

...Bloch's play undoubtedly tends to cheapen and make rather ridiculous one of the finest legends of the Jewish race...

...His Joseph emerges as a definitely attractive figure, proud of his race, simple and humble before his God...

...It's a Grand Life JUST why Mrs...

...The chief redeeming note, however, is sounded by George Jessel in his playing of Joseph...

...Just before he is to be put to death, he persuades the prison superintendent that the prison can be run on a profit-making basis-by irrigating the prison lands and selling the crops, by taxing the richer prisoners for their wine and luxuries, and by many similar little innovations...

...This makes it doubly uncongenial to have to report the messy and tasteless character of the play on which she lavishes so much personal distinction...

...It differs from the conventional film in being approximately twice as wide for a given height...

...This, he believes, would result in a drama quite as satisfactory as any artificial situations created by a playwright...

...In other words, a supposedly real triangle exists beneath the improvised triangle of the plot...

...Tyler, she has struck a personal note of rare charm and distinction, a much quieter note than usual and therefore disappointing to those who like to see Fiske fireworks, but essentially strong and persuasive...

...It is true that the motivations of the story are slyly twisted to the modern mood, that fear of being fed to the crocodiles has quite as much to do with Joseph's resistance to Potiphar's wife as any God-fearing impulse, and that a naturalistic turn is given to all the main events...

...Out of a Blue Sky SINCE the thunderbolt is conspicuously absent in this German play adapted by Leslie Howard, a more appropriate title would be Out of Thin Air-with all the emphasis on the very thin air...

...Joseph, who had used inside information in pretending to interpret the dream of the king's butler, and thus acquired a reputation, is sent for...

...Hughes is a former Pulitzer Prize winner, and also a teacher of dramatics in one of our largest universities...

...When you enter the theatre you are supposed to expect a performance of Camille at a German municipal theatre with a Russian director in charge...

...Various members of the audience volunteer for parts, the substance of a play is improvised and all might be well were it not for the unforeseen fact that a real as well as an imaginary situation exists between some of those who have volunteered to act...

...At last a young play-reader-supposed to represent the modern school in the theatre-suggests that a play be improvised, using members of the audience as the cast, and allowing them to play their natural selves...

...At last comes the fatal day when all Egypt is upset by Pharaoh's dream of the seven lean and the seven fat kine...

...Pharaoh is angry at finding him still alive, but promises to spare him if he can interpret the famous dream...

...At the Cort Theatre...

...Obviously, there is a certain cheapness to this Erskine formula, and also a real danger...

...Tyler, as a mother who has to face and help solve every conceivable sex and marriage problem of a preposterous family, holds a certain charm...

...His comedy sense is unerring, even though his acting is burdened with mannerisms...

...He is strict but humane...

...In this crisis, Joseph again exercises his powers of salesmanship...

...His Joseph is a modern trader and salesman in every sense of the word, practical and politic, unctuous and persuasive, but never without a note of pathos and of persistent homesickness for the land of Canaan and for his family...

...Happy Days is an all-star stunt, and merely hints at future possibilities...

...The curtain goes up on a stage stripped of scenery...

...Joseph "sells himself" to Potiphar, and, as his overseer, at once begins to dig ditches, just as a precaution, in case the gods of the Nile should forget to have the river overflow and irrigate the land...

...Both viewpoints are absurdly wrong, but they persist vigorously in an age that has thrown standards and clear thinking to the wind...

...He sustains an almost perfect balance between the comic and the pathetic...

...Bloch has managed to retain a certain underlying sincerity which keeps the comedy from turning completely to farce...

...The Japanese have been known to object to performances of The Mikado for no other reason than this human weakness of audiences...

...The initial idea has amusing possibilities...

...The character of Mrs...

...The scenes during which the director selects his cast from the audience and discusses drama in general are interminable...

...Fiske's share in the proceedings, one can explain it on the theory that she was captivated by the sad and charitable wisdom of the part she plays...

...To be effective, the satirist must show himself superior to those he satirizes-and this Hans Chlumberg, the German author, obviously fails to do...