The Play and Screen

...At the Masque Theatre...

...Journey's End easily marks the high point of this season's screen productions...

...Starting in near bankruptcy, they gradually strike a successful gait, permitting one of those full technicolor scenes of full minstrel panoply without which no production of this character would be full grown...

...In many respects, we are still only half awake to the fundamental changes which the introduction of dialogue has brought about in the motion-picture industry...

...He is good, but Quartermaine remains the incomparable Osborne...

...Sheriff's work has remained and casts its implacable spell...

...One may well look forward now to the time when the works of Shakespeare, Sophocles and many other classic authors will be recorded on the screen for the benefit of those communities which seldom or never have the opportunity of seeing a Margaret Anglin Electra or a Barrymore Hamlet...

...It is hard to commend adequately the artistic restraint of the producers in not attempting to foist additional character scenes on the screen version...

...There were so many chances to spoil the effect of suggested action by direct visualization...

...I cannot say truthfully that the screen version has captured to the full the penetrating humanity of the stage play...

...But for most people, it is the music by Irving Berlin which make this vehicle peculiarly happy for Mr...

...Andrew, being slightly impervious to feminine blandishments, remains on the safe side of the situation until his wife and mother-in-law object and interfere...

...Mary Fowler displays exceptional vigor as the cyclonic little Mexican and Anne Sutherland and Kathryn March make the mother-in-law and wife as disagreeable as possible...

...Jolson...

...Casual incidents do not have quite the same significance...

...Attention is held through speech rather than narrative action...

...Journey's End prompts these particular thoughts because of the amazingly exact transcription it represents from play to screen...

...After all, it is largely through Osborne's eyes that we see the import of this story of men at the last portals...

...Otto Kruger as Andrew, ably assisted by Claude Cooper as his chauffeur, get away with some amusing clowning in several scenes...

...It is inherently quite impossible to play the piece in one key and the necessity for mixing satirical farce with realism renders any hope of real characterization an impossibility...

...It is an almost literal transcript of R. C. Sheriff's superb play, dialogue and all, and establishes a convincing precedent for the full use of a dramatist's own material in the new medium of the talking screen...

...The value of detail has been hardly lost in a sense of too much detail...

...At Warner Brothers Theatre...

...In other words, Mr...

...Jolson has a peculiarly good voice for the recording screen and most of its amazing intensity comes through effectively...

...Whale being responsible for the original stage productions of the play itself...

...THE PLAY AND SCREEN By RICHARD DANA SKINNER Journey's End on the Screen N SPITE of the fact that Tiffany Productions labels its presentation of Journey's End as "the greatest screen drama of all time," one is almost inclined to agree with them-assuming, of course, that "all time" does not include all future time...

...Moreover, he has introduced other thoughts into his plot which complicate matters...

...The two stories do not mix, and the characters are never real enough in either key to make the play hold together...

...It is an old and familiar skeleton of an idea, but one that could always be dressed up freshly to suit a not too exacting audience...

...It is through him that we feel the impending doom...

...The initial idea is not bad, some of the individual scenes are effective in their own broadly satirical way, but the play as a whole hangs fire between satire and realism, the characters never emerge definitely as either fish or fowl, and the plot is so uneven in its pace-partly due to sloppy direction-that the net impression is far from compact entertainment...

...But the play is no real test or opportunity for actors of this calibre...

...The screen version of Journey's End marks, I believe, the beginning of the author's triumph over the depradations of motion picture editors...

...The supporting cast is excellent with Lowell Sherman in what must be, for him, the grateful role of a hero...

...They had to be easily and quickly read in order not to hold up the swing of the narrative...

...He can make such songs as Let Me Sing and I'm Happy, and Across the Breakfast Table Looking at You seem to have an importance quite beyond their mildly tuneful worth...

...One sees general action in the trenches, but mostly in the mass, or shaped in dark silhouette against flares or the flashes of gunfire...

...To separate satire from reality, most playwrights, when using this idea, have resorted to the old dream trick, in which any fantastic nonsense can fill the time and enliven the comedy...

...Individual drama is kept in the dugout, and with all the same cumulative terror and pathos of the play...

...But the use of dialogue has changed all this...

...Colin Clive makes an admirable Stanhope, and David Manners a splendid Raleigh...

...Partly for this reason, authors who had relied extensively on ingenious dialogue to carry their stories or plays were dumbfounded and outraged at the versions which finally appeared on the screen...

...Any one of a dozen practised dramatists might take the main idea and make something out of it-to wit, that a young business man of the Southwest grows so tired of routine, of family bridge parties and of the harangues of his wife and mother-in-law that he goes out in search of adventure (as he finds it in wild west stories) and accidentally falls into a real situation...

...In this respect, it is of one piece with that excellent screen version of Disraeli...

...MacLaren lacks the finer touches which make Osborne the outstanding character of the play...

...From then on the Mexican's charms and love of adventure make headway right up to the final curtain, when Andrew whisks her away under the protection of his gun for parts and a life unknown...

...Its title, Mammy, is thoroughly in line with the Jolson legend, but indicates comparatively little of the real theme of the story which is that of a wandering troup known as Meadows Merry Minstrels...

...There is something in the constant shifting of the camera and in the frequent use of close-ups which breaks the sense of cumulative strain one experienced from the stage production...

...Quartermaine indicated by the most subtle facial changes, that we realize what the summons to death means to the non-military man...

...To have imagined a similar recording and adaptation for the silent screen would have been almost grotesque...

...Hobart Bosworth is, of course, the genial Meadows and Lois Moran, his daughter...

...The average objection to the old line silent picture was based on the lack of subtlety in the telling of a story...

...The mounting terror of that pervasive silence preceding the German attack is lost to a slight degree...

...Aside from four or five scenes outside the dugout, used only to heighten atmosphere-and never to portray additional character scenes-the screen version is almost straight photography of the play...

...Ian MacLaren does not quite equal the superlative artistry of Leon Quartermaine as Osborne...

...Pearson has decided to keep the whole action on the plane of real events, injecting the satire ad libitum with a rather disastrous breaking of illusion...

...Probably few of the objectors stopped to realize the mechanical difficulties which forced the screen to adopt trite captions and worn-out phrases...

...Certainly an inborn prejudice against the absurd exploitation methods of the movies should not prevent the highest praise falling where it is due...

...They Never Grow Up THE New York Theatre Assembly, which has never been quite happy in this, its first season's choice of plays, adds one more near-play to its list in Humphrey Pearson's They Never Grow Up...

...The producers have helped to insure the feeling of authenticity by using the services of James Whale as director, Mr...

...But they have carefully kept the unity of viewpoint from the dugout itself...

...From his first song in the pelting rain to his last, he gives generously of that personality which stands almost unique in its kind today...

...Al Jolson Again IT IS a simply, frequently colorful and, of course, sentimental story in which Al Jolson makes his latest appearance on the talking screen...

...The death of Lieutenant Osborne in the daylight trench raid, the wounding of Lieutenant Raleigh in the early stages of the German attack, and especially the fatal shell explosion which brings the journey of Captain Stanhope to a close-these scenes might easily have been given in grewsome detail if the producers had wished to take full advantage of screen freedom...

...But Mr...

...This led to increased contempt for "movie mentality," originating with authors and seeping through to the more intelligent audiences...

...The talking picture of today-with recording apparatus so improved that even quick undertones of speech can be caught- is almost as dependent on dialogue as the stage play itself...

...Pearson has combined the story of a man who leaves wife and home for another woman with a broad satire on the love of story-book adventure in men who never grow up...

...The major part of his play is now pretty apt to find its way to the screen intact, with only such cuts, embellishments and additions as the greater scenic freedom of the screen indicates...

...Louise Dresser in the role of Al Jolson's mother supplies the Mammy theme with due intensity and pathos...

...At the Gaiety Theatre...

...But if these finer points have been lost or blunted, it is still true that the main magic of Mr...

...A caption and subtitle could have only a very few words...

...Andrew Ware, escaping from his home in company with his chauffeur, finds adventure in the form of a vivid Mexican lady who wishes to be smuggled across the border between bullets from the border patrol...

...The main point seems to be that Warner Brothers have decided to let Mr...

...This has put back a premium upon the skill of the original writer, and given him virtual command of the situation...

...Moreover, the telling of so much of the story in pantomime necessitated the use of obvious situations needing the least possible explanation...

...It is through his inner struggle, which Mr...

...Jolson have a full fling at comedy as well as tears, so that Mammy furnishes quite acceptable all-round entertainment, with a touch of real drama here and there and -title to the contrary-a minimum of Mammy songs...