The Play and Screen

...He makes a large loan to a German nobleman, and demands and receives the hand of his daughter in exchange...

...But its treatment is quite fresh, and the color and locale are new to the talking screen...

...Hodge, it has the added gravity of being a deliberately new twist...

...It is meant to be a broad satire on war and the way in which wars are supposedly engineered for business interests...

...It is a prophecy perhaps worth making that representative or realistic drama will shift more and more to the new talking screen while the stage will become increasingly the province of the drama of ideas and individual character...

...But today almost every national question is of international concern -including even our lofty experiment in prohibition...

...Some of the subjects which cry aloud for adequate and universal treatment are the bootlegger aristocracy, the Nordic mania in all its grotesque ramifications, the peace conferences that are really conferences to lower the cost of wars, the making of a president or ruler, the mania for big business mergers, the activities of police censors, the demi-gods who engineer women's styles, the press-agented royalty of the few remaining kingdoms and the fantastic doctrine of the chicken in the pot as the foundation of a nation's spiritual life...

...The chances are that we have no authors at present of the Gilbert calibre-that is, no men who can do more than copy in a minor key the surface methods of an old formula...

...The episode of a vagrant nephew is also introduced to spread the blackmail net a little further...

...It is free to follow action everywhere and to draw on everything from the clouds to the sea-bottom for atmosphere...

...The story is inept and unbelievable, as in most of the musicals, the lyrics are worse, and there is not a single evidence of originality throughout...

...Sponsored by any one of a dozen Broadway showmen, it would merit only the usual comment...

...But the screen can and does endow such themes with vivid reality...

...But it is getting a trifle too old (at least, one hopes so) to tolerate much longer the miserable dribble which parades these days as musical comedy, with its silly two-act conventions, its sporadic and unconvincing plots, its tiresome plugging of a few songs, and its lavish expenditure of money surrounding mediocre talent...

...Hodge himself, it is the kind of play one has learned to expect from A. H. Woods and David Belasco- only rendered a trifle more hypocritical by the efforts to combine rustic simplicity with obvious sophistication...

...The stage, (except at prohibitive cost, and even then in only a small measure) cannot give the sense of cumulative action and rich outdoor atmosphere which is the peculiar province of the screen...

...There is undoubtedly the germ of a brilliant travesty here but, as I have said, the quasi-realism spoils its effect...

...He has done this without attempting in any way to change his own perennial role of the man from "back home...

...The theme of the story is far from new-the adventures of the delicate, bartered bride, coming from civilization to live with a despised husband in a hot outpost of the empire, and meeting on the way there a handsome officer who later on defends her against her husband...

...Clark and McCullough's latest show, Strike Up The Band (at the Times Square Theatre) makes an ambitious but futile attempt to resurrect the Gilbert and Sullivan spirit, both in plot and lyrics...

...This time he is old Judge Joe Adams, chin whiskers and all, on the loose in New York as a protest against the tyranny of his Anti-saloon League wife...

...But all the relentless brilliancy and sure technique of the Savoy partnership are lacking...

...Coming from Mr...

...One can only lament the capitulation to the worst Broadway taste which this play involves...

...Except for the rural flavor emanating from Mr...

...Two Musicals THE musical comedy season in New York has not been conspicuous for true brilliancy or originality...

...Then comes the attack on the slender German garrison by the infuriated blacks, and the ultimate rescue of the white settlers by the advancing British cavalry...

...THE PLAY AND SCREEN By RICHARD DANA SKINNER The Old Rascal WILLIAM HODGE has stood for something quite definite in the American theatre-nothing very exalted on the artistic plane, perhaps, but something which, within its deliberate limits, was excellent entertainment and good characterization, something which caught the fancy of older people by its genial humor and captured the young by its broad comedy...

...It goes beyond the point of experiment and results in a highly satisfying and often thrilling melodrama in which the color process takes its rightful place as a means of heightening atmosphere and aiding in the full illusion of reality...

...The theme has many similarities to Condemned to Devils Island and many other stories of the tropics...

...The patter lyrics are reminiscent only in their form, and the sharp satire of the Gilbert method is sacrificed utterly by trying to give a slight illusion of reality...

...It is really unfortunate that in the latest play he has written for himself, The Old Rascal, Mr...

...Certainly the material for such work was never more abundant...

...The Gilbert method of setting the story in another country, time and place left the author a free hand from the start...

...The planter is drafted into service, tries to escape, and falls into the hands of the natives who quickly takes their revenge for his many insults to their women...

...The audience was prepared to accept the most absurd developments as part of the fun, and the resultant unity of effect vastly heightened the satirical import...

...The presence of this planter's bride in the colony forces the British and Germans to exchange civilities with him, but his brutality soon makes even this impossible...

...The tourists fail to take an interest in the war, the overhead eats up all the expected profits, and troubles multiply to a point that makes the magnate-once he wakes up-take a new view of life...

...I have often remarked that in the field of re-creating historical setting, the screen has no competitor...

...Hodge has sought to "modernize" his vehicle by the injection of a number of situations generally found only in the French farce and of others which lack even the justification of being necessary to the plot...

...The plot of the play, such as it is, turns on the efforts of these lawyers to extract a million or so in blackmail from both the Judge and Mrs...

...But since no writers of the calibre to handle such subjects have appeared on the horizon, it seems more likely that satire will concentrate in the brief topical revues which have been gaining consistently in excellence since the first Chariot revue visited these shores, and that the musical comedy will shift more and more toward the true operetta form...

...Nothing is more ridiculous and disillusioning than the ordinary stage battle-a point well substantiated by the fact that our two most striking war plays, Journey's End and What Price Glory ? keep all actual conflict entirely off-stage...

...Mamba, although trite in its essential idea, is bold and forceful in its story-telling, intriguing in its color and illusion, and powerful in its dramatic climax, an excellent example of the inherent value of the new medium...

...The characters are given realistic form in a modern setting to start the piece, and the extravaganza is accomplished through the outworn method of the dream-during which the millionaire imagines he is financing and conducting a war between the United States and Switzerland...

...Two examples of supposedly successful comedies-in the traditional sense-may help to illustrate the trend...

...A certain rich and vulgar local planter who has made himself obnoxious to the whites by associating with native women, decides that the time has come for him to make an important marriage...

...What we need is not a revival of the Gilbert and Sullivan method, but a rebirth of the animating spirit...

...Adams while pretending to serve the sacred interests of their clients...

...At the Bijou Theatre...

...The world is still young enough to enjoy bold and vigorous romance in musical setting...

...Material of this sort is ideally suited to the talking-color screen...

...The point selected for the main setting of the drama is on the frontier between the German and British possessions...

...To this extent, it merits some praise for its intentions...

...She finds her ultimate problem settled of course by a revolt of the natives in which the husband is killed...

...Flying High (at George White's Apollo) has, theoretically, everything that this type of entertainment should have...

...Officers of both armies exchange visits and hospitality...

...He is now ensconced in a luxurious hotel suite, with a valet and private secretary, both of whom turn out to be in league with the lawyers representing himself and his wife respectively...

...This involves a scene in which the Judge is administered knock-out drops, a girl is introduced into his room and bed, a photograph taken of the situation, and various suggestive complications worked out, from which the sting is supposedly removed by the fact of the judge's overwhelming innocence...

...Many of the Gilbert librettos deal with matters of purely British concern...

...He further complains, in a unique legal document, that she has always refused to have children and has otherwise made a highly unsatisfactory wife...

...Mamba THE Tiffany studios have produced in Mamba what they claim to be the first all-color screen drama-a story of German East Africa just before and during the first days of the world war...

...In fact, I have a very strong feeling that the next two or three years will see a pronounced drift toward the clever revues on the one hand and toward operettas on the other, leaving the musical comedy proper in a somewhat orphaned state...

...He is, in fact, about to divorce his wife after thirty-nine years of married existence because, in her latest access of zeal, she has destroyed his valuable wine cellar...

...Matters come to an almost tragic climax when the war breaks out, followed by a revolt of the natives, once most of the soldiers have gone to the frontier...

...He knows-as few others-how totally unnecessary all this implied dirt is to the success of a good character play...

...But one emerges from the theatre conscious only of having seen some exceedingly vigorous and well-pointed dancing, and a great deal of exceedingly vulgar comedy on the part of Bert Lahr...

...The Judge has recently inherited a fortune of $2,000,000, out of which he set aside $300,000, for his wife, only to have her bring the climax to tyranny by the above-mentioned liquor raid...