Group Makes Dreiser's Book Vivid Social Tragedy
Group Makes Dreiser's Book Vivid Social Tragedy American Living NewspaperScores A Social Beat RED-HOT OFF THE "PRESS'' "TRIPLE A PLOWED UNDER." The Living Newspaper (Federal Theatre Projeet)....
...This edition of 2,000 copies bears the joint imprint of the I.L.G.W.U...
...200,000,000, gathered from the public in taxes, is returned, not to the public, but to the middle-men, the great "processing" industries — tripling and quadrupling their profits of the boom years, the biggest officially authorized "steal"—I use the Living Newspaper's word—in our history...
...Oh the same program is a short subject filmed in the Austrian Tyrol, entitled "How to Ski," with instructions and demonstrations by Hannes Schneider, world-famous authority on skiing...
...Aren't we all...
...Schnitxler's "Liobolei" Holds for Fourth Week at 53rd St...
...Magda Schneider, co-star of "Be Mine Tonight," plays the leading role in "Liebelei...
...between them, Clyde, struggling in the Slough of Despond, having glimpsed the golden lure never to turn back, yet desperately doomed to fight and fall in the No Man's Land between the Classes, rejected by both, unwilling to join one and unable to reach the other, victim in tin one-sided individual struggle...
...Educational Department and the Rand School Press...
...public operation, by ami for the unemployed, of closed factories, and other projects that might work sanely toward a removal of the basic evils of the' system that produce the turmoil and inequities of today...
...Finally, with the capitalist in the background shouting "Rugged individualism," the farmer who cant get prices that cover his production costs, the worker who can't get a job, the housewives who can't make ends meet, the starving everywhere, recognize that their interests are not diverse, but one...
...This is the preachment of the Speaker and the play, most effectively pressed in the final scene, of the trial, where rich and poor alike rail upon the befuddled Clyde, wso was all the time doing nothing worse than responding to natural, to almost universal, desires...
...But if future presentations of The Living Newspaper are is bold,' as clear-sighted and as free, here'is the first promise (beyond any March of Time or commercially controlled news-reels) of an unfettered picture of our times...
...Claessens admits that he does not Issue press releases or arrange' dramatic stunts with "lefts" and ¦ever arranged with newspapers to be photographed on the picket tine...
...Case of Clyde Griffiths" strips the Dreiser novel bare of elaborate detail, leaves the raw conflict exposed—nay, stands the three figures spot-lighted on the dark stage while the Speaker tells us what they represent...
...Moreover, his pamphlets over the years have had a circulation of 110.000 copies...
...the southern share-croppers,, denied their part of the money the government paid for not growing pigs and cotton and corn, at last wake up and unionize...
...one or two ill-turned, as when the appearance of Earl Browder rouses loud joy among the Communists in the audience—when all he has to say is that nowhere is the Supreme Court given power to declare acts of Congress unconstitutional, a fact which (how many Communists know...
...Dorothy Sherwood drowns her starving son —and is sent to die...
...Boris Karloff has the stellar role while the big cast includes Ricardo Cortez...
...Walkinq Dead" Hoods Bill at Brooklyn Strand "The Walking Dead," mystery thriller, heads the double feature program this week at the Brooklyn Strand Theatre...
...With a" four-gage tabloid program and a stir and turbulence onstage and in the enthusiastic house, the Federal Theatre's Living Newspaper has got under way, with a rousing and searching survey of the farmers' predicament: "Triple A Plowed Under...
...But Triple A tried to bring back prosperity by artificially creating high prices—which profited only the capitalist, Whom we watch in a brief sketch wondering whether to buy his wife (mistress ?) another car or a sable coat and compromising by getting her both...
...who is free from such desire...
...He rescues an engaged couple, falls in love with the woman, and then the hilarious complications start...
...auctions of farms (bought back for 15c...
...But, in its many details and total effect, this summary Living Newspaper survey of the farmer's fate, these past fifteen years, .is a devastating blast of fact against a rotten, floundering ship of st a t e, ill fitted to weather the tempest of our times...
...The pamphlet is a 30-page booklet on tile technique of public speaking, intended to help trade Unionists to become effective speakers and thus render better service tefthe cause of labor...
...Albee Holds 'Follow the Fleet" Second Week Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers essay into the stratosphere of entertainment in "Follow the Fleet," which continues for a second week at the R.K.O...
...The sharp, short sketches begin with "Inflation," 1917, an ironic picture of soldiers marching in the background while farmers are being exhorted to grow more wheat t* save our womanhood, to save democracy, to save the world...
...And, without any pretense of soothing a troubled administration, drawing every item out of the nation's news, the 46 reporters and editors have given the playwright and actors a solution of the farmers' problem that embraces all society and—though Socialism is a word unspoken—will delight all who see in this avenue the betterment of man's lot...
...SOCIAL DRAMA STRESSED "CASE OF CLYDE GRIFFITHS.*, Erwin Piscator and Lena GoldSeftfjfs'r -vkrwlen of the Dreiser novel Milton Shubert and The Group Theatre...
...W.U...
...The last news flash announces a conference—the very day of the play's presentation—with a program of municipal ownership of public utilities...
...modeled in clay, wood, cloth, metal and rubber, and photographed minutely, the Mascow film studio has succeeded fas producing a social satire which bears directly on contemporary civilization and yet in such a deft and impish way that the audience has a hilarious time...
...last showing of this film in Greater New York...
...Edmund Gwenn, Marguerite Churchill, Warren Hull, Barton McLane and Henry O'Neill...
...Irving Berlin has written seven new songs to test the vocal excellence of Astaire, Miss Rogers and a newcomer to 'the screen, Harriet Hilliard...
...Yesterday Arthur Schnitzler's Viennese romance, "Liebelei," began its fourth week st the 55th Street Playhouse...
...The 'first booklet published in 1933 went through two editions and the revised manual has been bdapted especially for the trade unions...
...a truly wholesome, a happy state can be secured only when it is demanded as a right for all, not slipped into as the privilege and possession of a few...
...A Socialist should not mix Into every union squabble or issue a press release when he sneezes...
...Sondra: the dazzling unconcern and gaiety of boundless wealth...
...The New Gulliver In Last N. Y. Run At Little Carnegie formal clothes...
...Perhaps as a demonstration 'to Elmer Bice, after "Ethiopia," "Triple A Plowed Under" seems absolutely uncensored...
...but there rise new effects from Morris Carnovsky's casual or caustic or cautioning voire, as he not merely tells the story or voices the hidden anxieties and self-questionings of the characters, bat calls warnings to them, answers their tortured questionings, and to the audience points the moral of it all...
...Some of the sketches are less effective than the whole...
...the milk strike...
...One gesture toward liberty does not, of course, create freedom...
...Albee...
...At the Barry, mere...
...The second feature is "Song of the Saddle," starring Dick Foran, the singing cowboy, and Alma Lloyd...
...August Claessens is the chairman of the Labor Committee of the Socialist Party, instructor in public speaking in the Rand School, and teacher in public speaking, economics and trade union history for the I.L.G...
...Then the end of the war, "overproduction"—which means poor distribution and grasping middleman: 3 cents a quart to the farmer for milk, and 15 cento from the mother that buys it...
...made one of the platforms of Big Stick Bull Moose Teddy Roosevelt's third party...
...Then the Nine—not muses, but musty-i-gre»t guns fire their charge, and fire Triple A from the statute books of the land...
...Soviet puppet film, "The NOW Gulliver...
...The New Gulliver" an Impish Satire on Civilization file week the Little Carnegie Theatre on 57th Street resounds with .the daughter of Jonathan Swift's Lilliputians in a revival of the...
...Through the use of three-dimensional puppets...
...When Gulliver, in modern dress, of course, lands among the diminutive inhabitants of Lilliput, he Is faced with the familiar problems of rich and poor, exploiters and exploited, class distinctions sal social snobbery, revolutionary plots against the existing ojder, all at which form an excellent stage from which the producers threw the foil force of their wit and humor on subjects which are the challenging problems of our times...
...the test is in what follows...
...Petticoat Fever" With Montgomery- Lo y at Capitol "Petticoat Fever," a romantic comedy starring Robert Montgomery and My ma Loy and featuring Reginal Owen, opens at the Capitol Theatre today...
...This will be the Experimental Players at Rand School The Experimental Players under the direction of Mrs...
...Rapidly, in black-outs all rich in commentary on this most vital problem, and some starkly impressive, we watch the years bring desperate times, and desperate remedies: Milo Reno and the farmers' holiday...
...The women of Detroit strike against high meat prices...
...Other unions have expressed an interest in the manual and arrangements will be made with them for special editions...
...Instead of reducing to an individual's story the social implications of the- theme (as the change of title might lead us to expect), the striking Piscator "Case of Clyde Griffiths" goes out of the theatre's way to emphasise the social conflict and cause of Dreiser's "An American Tragedy...
...And high prices created by Triple A, themselves created triple distress: farmers raised crops they couldn't sell...
...Though some of the swift episodes, on the stage of variously used platforms and runways, are less convincing, and though an occasional remark of the Speaker seems out of place, there is no doubt that "Case of Clyde Griffiths" is the most provocative version of Dreiser's book we have' seen on the stage, a stirring drama and a profound social document...
...Perhaps theatrically the best scene is that in which the superbly sycophantic outfitter to gentlemen equips Clyde with his first suit of New Parhphlet by August Claessens Due to requests received by trade unions for a revised edition of a manual for speakers by August Claessens, he has revised it and the first .edition of "A Manual for Trade Union Speakers" has been 'ordered by the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union...
...the burning of crops—the coming of AAA...
...the Amalgamated Clothing Workers and a number of other unions...
...Not that they blamed him for yearning after the fruits of wealth...
...As a Social Democrat, Claessens declares that Socialists should Serve the unions, establish friendly relations, and hesp to bring trade unionists and Socialists closer together...
...Gorge Frtzmaurice directed for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer...
...it has double use in the Katharine Cornell production of the Wilder-Obey "Rape of Lucrece...
...And isn't it, as the workers cry in rejecting, in damning, Clyde because of his single-handed quest, inevitably hopeless when for one's self alone...
...But that he had sought self-advancement selfishly, trampling on other lives...
...The Speaker is, of course, not a new device...
...workers, more and more of them, lost their jobs, and increasing millions grew gaunt and hungry and gnawed by penniless woe...
...Dionne Quints in "Country Doctor" Holds at Music Hall Established as one of the most unusual film events of the season and playing to capacity audiences, "The Country Doctor," in which the famous Dionne Quintuplets play their first starring roles, goes into its second big week at the Radio City Music Hall...
...Henry B. Harris will open in three one-act plays on Sunday evening, April 5, at the Rand Playhouse...
...Roberta: the drudgery and hopeless drive of the poor...
...Adapted from Mark Reed's successful stage play, the story concerns a lonely wireless operator who has led a hermit's existence at a remote station...
...At the Biltmore...
Vol. 19 • March 1936 • No. 12
