The Play and Screen

...At the Hollywood Theatre...

...The play could not possibly hope to hold interest unless Delphine and Marjorie were rolled into one character...

...But suppose we look at the way this material is wasted...

...If love of operatic music is to be fostered by the screen, it must be through a complete reorganization of operatic standards and methods, through applied imagination and through the training of an entirely new group of singing actors...

...Vane has invented a sort of limbo for suicides, a mild purgatory for snobs and drunkards, a continued life of service for ministers, and a road "in the other direction" for a guilty industrial magnate...

...In many ways, Outward Bound is one of the best acted pictures of recent months...

...There is, however, one difference between an unsuccessful play and an unsuccessful omelette...

...The only false note comes with the scenes of the ship approaching the mystical shores of heaven...

...Cohan, who understands theatrical requirements as well as any living American, was unable to spot the main trouble during rehearsal...

...The cause for a flat and discouraged omelette is generally shrouded in mystery...

...Delphine (played with dignified good taste by Julia Hoyt) continues to hover fondly on the edge of Lodar's life, watching out for him with strictly maternal instinct...

...Even Dante used poetic privilege to place a few of his political aversions in uncomfortable spots...

...The problem of the young suicides, who found an illicit love-life too hard to face, is evaded by having them rescued and brought back to life...

...Douglas Fairbanks, jr., adds to the impression created in The Dawn Patrol of being an artist in his own right...

...Its dramatic result is merely to make Delphine a colorless auxiliary instead of being, as she should be, the centre of Lodar's bitter resentment of Krieger...

...It will be recalled that the play concerns itself with the experiences of seven characters who find themselves—to their varied concern, horror and amazement-—dead...

...Cohan, and one which Louis Calhern plays admirably...

...A thirst for revenge in an otherwise peaceful and sensitive person offers ample material for drama...

...They are simply good friends, and Lodar's love interest is transferred to an insipid blonde child, with social antecedents, who, it seems, learned from her dying mother that the only thing worth while in life was to find what you really want most to do and then to do it...

...Since modern psychiatry rather tends to the idea that a complex can be cured within the patient's mind by laying bare its source, the Krieger shooting episode loses the one thing that could give it drama, namely the idea of last rest...

...Lodar's life was saved, after desertion, by this same Krieger, but only after Krieger had demanded and received his price in the favors of one Delphine...

...We learn certain essential bits about their lives, and then hear the verdict of the heavenly examiner...

...It seems he was one of those sensitive plants shoved into the war with fatal effect...

...The screen version of Outward Bound gains considerably through initial scenes in a London fog, a vision of the mysterious vessel at anchor in the Thames and later through scenes on the deserted deck of the ship—the ship that plows endlessly back and forth without captain or crew...

...The play, written by Sutton Vane, has been changed very little in its adaptation to the screen, and Warner Brothers have lavished upon it an exceptionally fine cast, including Leslie Howard in the former Lunt role, Beryl Mercer in her old part of the mother, Dudley Digges, Helen Chandler and Douglas Fairbanks, jr.—the last, incidentally, being one of the most promising young actors on the screen today...

...As a result of this hazy code, so curiously derived (especially in a Cohan-sponsored play) the blonde Majorie does not hesitate, with the aid of a penthouse moon and music, to taste a bit of matrimony in advance of a carefully planned wedding...

...The screen can be proud of the collective work of such artists—even though the moralizing of the play itself is as wobbly and uncertain as a broken rocking-chair...

...Otherwise the photography is subdued and dimly enough lighted to lend mystery and atmosphere...

...He was degraded from his rank for refusal to obey some brutal orders, and was subjected to every kind of indignity by one sergeant Krieger...

...All in all, the author seems anxious to offend no one, and particularly not the sentimentalists...

...It is a case of the important things happening to the wrong people, thus failing to support a moderately interesting idea with dramatic unity...

...Not so the son, whose voice is well modulated and thoroughly expressive of restrained but taut emotions...

...It must always be a bit presumptuous for the human mind to attempt to mete out heavenly justice, and it is not surprising that the author gets his ideas of heaven, hell and purgatory rather mixed...

...On the stage, valuable time is always lost in "exposition," that is, in dialogue which does not advance action but which informs the audience of important previous events...

...Such a character presents colorful possibilities...

...This character, Lodar Baron, is, however, suffering from a complex...

...The technical freedom of the screen permits an even better flow and continuity than the stage...

...There are many points where the play gets sentimentally and hopelessly involved...

...Here you have, as material, a financially successful jazz writer, obviously capable of higher flights (the Philharmonic accepts his symphony) and with a family background of distinguished Hungarian nobility...

...Cohan's sponsorship and the serious intentions of its authors and of the leading actors...

...It is a moderately good idea quite ruined in the playwriting...

...Considered purely as drama and playwriting, however, Outward Bound has many excellent moments...

...In general, the after-life becomes a continuation of the present, except that the characters are henceforth acting under assignment and without free choice...

...Helen Chandler, who first took New York's breath in a memorable performance of the child in Ibsen's Wild Duck, and then failed to improve on her abilities, now shows the good effects of screen direction and immediate and constant supervision...

...Outward Bound OUTWARD BOUND has remained a rather vivid memory with many playgoers from the days when Alfred Lunt dominated its eerie quality by a superb bit of acting...

...Cliveden-Bank...

...It may be recalled that his vigorous father, when acting on the speaking stage, had a peculiarly nasal and unpleasant voice which he managed to use with comic effect...

...They meet on a mysterious ship which carries them, outward bound, on the voyage from life to eternal life...

...It merits a pulling to pieces of its strangely weak points simply because of Mr...

...This is the kind of play generally produced in a fit of enthusiasm by a third-rate shoestring manager...

...Part of Lodar's complex concerns Delphine's past—yet the two are not in love...

...Louis K. Anspacher's The Rhapsody, presented by none other than George Cohan with Louis Calhern and an excellent cast resolves itself into a rather dreary parade of words in which one detects, as a matter of academic interest, all the scenes and situations which must have appeared in the manuscript as exceptionally "good theatre...

...Opera as we know it is a very crude art, in which people with magnificent voices and no acting ability are carefully trained to render emotions with outlandish gestures...

...The play is the type so dear to Galsworthy—good milk of human kindness watered with sentimental compromises...

...Clown, vagabond and artist all rolled into one—the kind of character that appeals strongly to Mr...

...The reason or reasons for an unsuccessful play can invariably be spotted—after the event...

...Opera on the Screen THE recent screen spectacle of Martinelli in the temple scene of Aida serves as a caution to those too enthusiastic about the popularizing of opera through this new medium...

...Moreover, letting the audience believe for half an act that Krieger has really been shot is simply one of those inane theatrical devices which rings so false that it makes Krieger's later entrance almost comic...

...Everything possible has been done to give its best scenes a flare of color and showmanship, but nothing can overcome the handicap of muddled thinking, muddled morals and the basic splitting of dramatic interest between' two women...

...Suspense is well created without ever carrying too far...

...It is just unbelievably bad playwriting...

...Midget, Tom Prior's unknown mother, and Dudley Digges does his usual finished work as Thompson, the examiner...

...The basic play material is further wasted by a very silly and prolonged treatment of the Krieger complex...

...THE PLAY AND SCREEN By RICHARD DANA SKINNER The Rhapsody EVERY now and then one is brought to realize sharply that good ingredients, good actors, a good playwright and a first-rate producer cannot always make a good play...

...Leslie Howard as the sensitive drunkard, Tom Prior, pursues his quiet, effective way with that matchless finesse which has won him deserved distinction...

...This murky incident has almost nothing to do with the plot and is dragged in presumably by the box-office door...

...At the Cort Theatre...

...The fact that Lodar loves one woman, but resents Krieger's connection with another, is what I mean by having the important things happen to the wrong person...

...Beryl Mercer repeats her unforgettable performance of Mrs...

...This desire to kill Krieger constitutes Lodar's complex, and the way he is cured forms the substance of the play, covering a period of twenty-four hours...

...Alison Skipworth is at her best as the snobbish Mrs...

...On the screen, such events can be shown directly, the transition from prologue to present action being swift and natural...

...All this happened years ago, but has so rankled in Lodar's mind that he cannot find peace until he has found and killed Krieger...

...When translated directly and literally to the screen, it all becomes highly absurd...

...It all ends too neatly in permitting Lodar to "shoot" Krieger with blank cartridges, on the rather discredited theory that putting an obsession into action promptly cures the obsession...

...A general confusion of moral standards and a tricky and tedious use of modern psychological notions are other causes contrbuting to the stalemate...

...Here the producers have introduced some effects dear to the Hollywood heart which belie the simple intentions of the author—towering white buildings with illuminated domes rising in Maxfield Parrish perspectives and hinting suspiciously of a glorified Manhattan skyline...

...He is the eternal clown, bringing rhythm and gaiety to others at the price of his own suffering...

...A close-up of Martinelli's struttings becomes a serious disillusionment...

...In this case, the curious fact is that Mr...