About the Theatre
SHIPLEY, JOSEPH T.
About the Theatre By joseph T. Shipley THE ART OF SHOWMANSHIP "SEVEN LIVELY ARTS." Lyrxee and mutie by Cole Porter. Staged fry Hat-sard Short. Presented by Billy Rose. At the Ziegfeld...
...In th* mkht of a War-Loan drive, fro* < hampers*, on opening night, flowed like water...
...snd the Carmen Cafe" is transmogrified into Billy Rose's Diamond Horseshoe...
...Sharps hooting U. S. gun crews knock down scores of attacking Japs...
...Months sfter the siege to free her began, ruined Warsaw still awaits liberation...
...There are Alicia Markova and Anton Dolin, in numbers no less simlessly beautiful than when they are with a ballet company...
...way's most fanfared display of wail* ties and taxi shoe...
...There'a old Doc Rockwell, entertaining when he in Mr...
...snd there's sn amusing piece for Bart Lahr as Orson Welles, by Charles Sherman...
...Dealing with the arts, ths show tucks in some jibes st the Workers in the held, from stage hsnds and agents to critics snd plsys with long runs but no prises: "Angel Street," "Life With Father" and "Tobacco Road" intertwine...
...Pretending to be about seven youngsters come to New York to make a name in seven arts, the show is at its best when it forgets them and flashes its stars...
...The program, for which ticket requests have been received from all over the nation since early summer, will be marked by the world premiere of the eagerly-awaited Metro Goldwyn Mayer Technicolor film, "National Velvet," with a holiday stage show that consists of the theatre's celebrated and beloved Yuletide pageant, "The Nativity," to be presented this year for th* twelfth consecutive season, and "Star Bright," a festive, new stag* circus, produced by Leonidoff...
...Although critics aa* regular first-nighters hsve been indiaal to leave off gala clothes until our beys-, my sons—come home with victory, evea some of them were seduced into Bros...
...U. S. bombers blast Jap bases and railroad bridge in Burma...
...the Rhinematdens become swift free style swimmers in Billy Rose's Aquacade...
...In this, a sparking, tinsel-bedecked Benny Goodman leads his impetuous band—to s first set finale of a show as gorgeously tinseled, as expensive, as pretentious as sny production the sons of St...
...In the current show she burlesques a parlor vocalist, an oriental dancer with a jungle drum and a crick in her neck, an English hostess for American soldiers, a woman trying to buy a ticket for a ballet called S. Hurok—and more...
...There IfffJ lavish, even garish, display...
...Two girls and two boys are chosen as country's healthiest...
...From the free champagne te the pictures of the seven lively acta by delirious Dali, this is as lush and lavish a spread of showmanship as Broadway could hope to see...
...Audience, speaking for us all in clever words by Ben Hex-lit, and with a bad-hoy vulgarity in the antic showing of the glass lady with the mislocated lights...
...Bert Lahr is the direct and noisy comic, with belly-laugh-appeal...
...no exppmj has boon spared...
...Perhsps the most characteristic movement of the show is in what happens when "Billy Rose Buys the Metropolitan Opera House...
...She kids things, kids even the things she's doing...
...On* ticket for opening night (orchestrs, $24 each) coakl have bought a War Bond and left enough over for a seat to a good show...
...The minor personages seem in the main just teasing delays until these two^ appear...
...There's Jack Benny: take your choice of classic or jive...
...Oa the Western Front: Allies drive deeper into Germany...
...Cole Porter's songs are far from his best...
...The Red Army begins a great offensive to oust Hun from Warsaw, capital of Poland...
...But what these comedians say is less important than how they say it, and what they do...
...Heavy seasonal rains become a major obstacle to the Allies offensive...
...This aspect of the evening, however, is neither especially fresh nor especially clever...
...Oat ¦ •viewer was led by th* sparkle and fizz to suggest that the next decade in the theatre may be known as the Billy Rose era...
...Question of Taste There is no doubt that Billy rose to the occasion...
...he enjoys his antics and the fun is Infectious...
...Russian troops advance on Prage, and fierce street-to-street fighting by Germans stalls Red's advance...
...EXCLUSIVE: News Forum presents "Confidentially Yours" with Arthur Hale...
...rising is not over-grandiose...
...Beatrice Lillis can be noisy too, but more often she's the sly sort, working by inuendo—st times one might say insinuendo—to her more sophisticate comic goal...
...snd she looks down over the roof of her trsvesty to invite you to join in the spoof...
...French First Army moves into Mulhouse, while to the north U. S. Seventh Army takes Strasbourg...
...Bleak winter closes in on Americans...
...Jap planes counter attack and fire carrier-based plsnes...
...N. Y. pro football Giants win eastern title...
...but among the more thoughtful even along Broadway there arc grave doubts as to whether he chose tha proper occasion, and whether tha...
...Heavy mud slows U. S. Third Army in the Metz area...
...Pictures by tha deliberately umbiiicai Dali present a cock-eyed if not a iiriihni "seven lively arts...
...Floods and mud slow 5th Army in Italy...
...Glitter and tinsel increase, as Aida turns into a mammoth cirrus...
...The Pacific Theatre of War: Sensational action pictures filmed by Signal Corps men show Yank attack of Manila...
...They are a well contrasted pair...
...Audry hsve brought forth to dazzle Broadway...
...Home Front News: New Liberator Bomber named "Winged Victory...
...In movement of body and fate, ana ia superb...
...SIEGE OF WARSAW" FILMS HIGHLIGHT VARIED HEWS PROGRAM AT EMBASSY First pictures of the Siege of Warsaw headlines the new progrsm this' week st all Embassy Newsreel Theatres...
...Lahr and Lillie: Laugh You Silly...
...FAMED CHRISTMAS PROGRAM AT MUSIC HALL Radio City Music Hall's far-famed Christmas stage and screen program, one of the most spectacular highlights of New York's theatrical calendar, is currently being presented in three parts...
...Gowns are worn, tat models and chorines bedecked, oa tha theory that if you pay a large eneu...
...At the Ziegfeld Theatre...
...Heavy bombers, big guns and rockets blast path of destruction...
...And—by all means!—there are Bert Lahr and Beatrice Lillie...
...the cleverest in words, "Hence It Don't Make Sense," is too tricky...
...Moss Hart has given Beatrice Lillie some gool skits...
...Are we, even before the war is over, launching into an extravagant* of display and reveling heedlessness thst will dim the frenzied twenties?—And th* play opened, and thin extrtvaganr* was flaunted, on th* anniversary of Pearl Harbor...
...Billy Rose seems to work on the theory thst if things era big enough and plenty enough and expensive enough, there's bound to be enough good enough to go around The theory works...
...sum for a costume, it's bound to be root Tha theory doesn't work...
Vol. 27 • December 1944 • No. 51
