AMUSEMENTS
Amusements The Week On Stage By Joseph T. Shipley TARAMA. which in man's history began "as religion, sought to satisfy an impulse and a need: to celebrate the good god. and to ward off the...
...and to ward off the evil...
...To pledge himself would be accepting the principle of censorship...
...a film depicting the economic structure of what is believed to be the world's oldest "Socialist" government, will be presented at the Fifth Avenue Playhouse beginning this Saturday, May 4th...
...born young and powerful, rising in kindliness and bountiful increase, then wearing through to old age and—defeated by the demons of winter—to sterile death...
...There was Jesus, whose disciples took a long time to learn his "kingdom' was not of this world, who was the more misunderstood by the "respectable" element, in favor with the Romans, whe were comfortable under the existing regime, and would not see it disturbed There was Judas: did he really covet those thirty pieces of silver, or did he betray Jesus "in jealous love of the Magdalene—or did he hope for the "deliverer" to free the Jews from Roman yoke and "betray" the-pacifist in the hope oi forcing him to call his followers to arms...
...John A t*Q the Durham...
...As art...
...man's first attempt at an explanation of the universe, in terms of metaphysical faith: and man's early effort to control the universe, in terms cf physical science...
...But perhaps that quality would have withheld the whole affair STEAW MAN For centuries after his rebellion was beaten, straw effigies of Guy# Fawke...
...The Little Carnegie Theatre is holding over "The Loves of Casanova" for a second week...
...at Ma.'.ine Elliott's...
...We ddrt **M another Passaic on our hands," ¦* 5sf...
...It is easy to see why those »* ho have lived with this story as reality—who blend % the history (as we have it) and the symbol—should be violent Anti-Semites...
...at 8.30 p. m. This orgsnJsd** desires to organize colored women euu...
...This double meaning of primitive drama Is fully found in the Christ story...
...But in the present play one personality dominates...
...May 6. It has been adapted from the Russian by Herman Bernstein and Leonid Snegoff...
...In "Before You're 25...
...James Barton heads the list, but on his trail, with songs and smiles, come Prances White, Clair borne Foster, and a long list more...
...Good News" is a great hit in Budapest, which has sent us many successful farces...
...The pot of gold is always at the rainbow's end...
...For all the neglect of the outside world, however, the boat show with but one lapse from record...
...In the...
...a new drama by Dmitry Scheglov, the first play written in the Soviet Republic to be done here, will open at the Masque Theatre Monday evening...
...Swimming and fishing at the cabin door...
...The single men live aboard the tug...
...and perhaps an "almost stainless" heroine is as much as a man can expect these spotted days...
...Bumpstead-Leigh...
...Milton Sills, that most competent of motion picture i stars, and Dorothy MackaiU are starred...
...organizer for North 0*"H Another organizer will also be l** "5 the field In the Carolina Piedmont * m near future, McMahon said...
...In bringing the Fassnachts and the Freiburg Passion Play to the j*6ullt Hippodrome, the consummaWsshowmanship of Morris Gest faced an insoluble problem...
...This has resulted, standard of working conditioas, aaawj could have been prevented if P*J for handling human problenJi *** been as carefully laid as ««• * plans forhandling machinery...
...mistakes by bosses in the North, sw said, as to labor policy in the aw* modern of industries, have been as* mitted to follow these industrisi a*> the South...
...It seeks to demonstrate this by picturing Clement Coibin as a complete ass...
...But there, historically, were the Jews, subject tc the Romans, venting in rare physical outbursts and in frequent Messianic visions their hope or despair of deliverance...
...On the same program is "Reporting The World," a short film about the worldwide service of the United Press: "The Czarina's Secret" with Olga Baclanova...
...It is In the nature of a program of American Negro music con•efsting of four dramatic units built around the characteristic spirituals, folksongs and "exaltations" of the race, each complete with specially designed costumes and settings...
...Theatre, Broadway and 52nd street, where it opened for an indefinite two-a-day run...
...thought Chapman And so the Show Boat was born...
...Inevitable corruption and great dangei came...
...It combines, therefore, worship and magic...
...Ludlow and another wellknown actor, So Smith were rivals for the Hudson trade for a number of years...
...The theme is the I familiar yet valid notion that youth is by nature radical, that "growing up" is usually the process of "settling down...
...And other things too numerous to mention...
...One valid radical moment must be given due mention...
...The method of "The Sea-Gull" suggests comparison with "The Cherry Orchard...
...Registered extras in Hollywood would scorn the salary of a show boat star...
...that breath of a generation gone by, but recurrent in amusing satire...
...were burned annually by the London bourgeois...
...Always there was the resurrection...
...motion without sound—may well supplement music—sound without motion— there is dance music intended for the dance, and there is music which no danc-1 ing can adorn...
...Morris Gest has removed the term "Royal" from the venerable choral organization which has joined the Freiburg Passion Play at the Hippodrome...
...She Got What She Wanted" runs on and on at Wallack's Theatre, with its presentation of one of the oldest problems that are still vital in the world today: eternal dissatisfaction with what one has, eternal reaching out to what one has not...
...And as Jesus became the scapegoat-hero, they were conceived as the forces of evil he must rise again to destroy...
...Justifying the ways of God and the comfortable middle class/ "Before You're 25" has Interesting moments, but in general made me feel as though a giant bully were pounding the stuffings out of a gallant lad...
...But they are "net"—with a vacation thrown in...
...As philosophy, the religious drama of the Egyptians and the Greeks (and most otner eany peoples) presented the story of the year, or of the sun...
...George Playhouse presents William Haines in "Alias Jimmy Valentine," a very unusual feature called, About Show Boats "CHOW BOAT," the movietone version of Edna Ferberis Mississippi novel and the Ziegfeld stage play combined which has tied up to the wharf of the Globe Theatre, ushers into celluloid drama a vehicle as native as the covered wagon...
...Mary Anderson Warns Besses i GREENSBORO, N. C. — (FF)- - Warning to Southern employ** against the economic folly of uW low-wage program was voices W Mary Anderson, director of the f9*] ens Bureau of the U. S. Depsrhuu* of Labor, in an address befori • j Piedmon Organizing Council...
...Should he present it as art...
...At the Klaw, the natural tones of Mrs...
...This is the moral to be : drawn from the two programs of The Neighborhood Playhouse and the Cleveland Orchestra, five nights at the Manhattan Opera House...
...who h"y charge of the union, will be the prised speaker, and Victor C. Gasper, orsana* will serve as chairman, tber spesusi are A. Elizabeth Hendrlckson...
...Thirteen floating theatres still ply the Ohio-Mississippi chain, their calliopes echoing from bluff to bluff as they are propelled by a pusher tug or tugs along seventy-five miles apart to give performthe river, stopping at towns from five to seventy-five miles apart to give performances...
...Bobby Dolan, one of "the youngest composers in captivity," is leaving "Follow Through"' to write the tunes, on the coast, for Ina Claire's new talking picture...
...Alibi" is a hit, and the 44th Street Theatre in New York, just wired for talking pictures, seems destined for many weeks of capacity business...
...Recent writers have seen, in the life and passion 'of Jesus, a third satisfaction...
...WfflSi, Lehman of the A. F. of L...
...I say, was Jesus, a malcontent who consorted with beggars and prostitutes, and preached disturbing doctrines, barring the rich from the high place hereafter they had always expected their power and money to secure for them...
...May 7th in a unique presentation of summer theatrical fare...
...The result of the merging of history and symbol is...
...The cast includes Frances Carson...
...Could he present it as religion...
...News from Schwab and Mandel's busy office comes with many items...
...has coatinued to move with sluggish majesty up and down the rivers for nearly a century, playing such prime river favorites as "East Lynne," "The Parson's Bride," "Lena Rivers," Chinatown After Dark" and "Tempest and Sunshine...
...Alibi," Roland West's film version of the stage play, "The Night Stick," is to be seen and heard, now, and from all box office Indications, for many months to come...
...In conjunction with "Red Majesty," the Playhouse will present for a second week Emil Jannings in the burlesque movie...
...For the rest, the wiser ones discovered that, if the eyes are clawed, what happens on the stage need not Interfere with the music...
...FLYING AWAY At the Comedy Theatre, a group Including E. T. Ballantine, Lewis Leverett, Walter Abel, Helen Freeman, and the less convincing Barbara Bulgakova, give an excellent performance of Chekov's "The Sea-Gull...
...this Sunday night, May 5, the Seventh Author's Night...
...Both work casually, interested rather'in persons, and the play of persons on environment, than in a progressive story...
...Margaret Lee, little flapper in the play, at the Chanin 46th Street Theatre, has had her contract extended three years...
...The screen play is taken from the stage play which A. E. Matthews made such a marked triumph...
...Paris in Five Days" and Charlie Chap- ' Un in "A Day's Pleasure" for Saturday and Sunday, May 4 and 5. Managing Director Samuel Baron announces the appearance of Samuel Hopkins Adams, author of "The Flagrant Years...
...How about the small towns and settlements on the rivers remote from travelled roads and railroads...
...This is Ronald Colman's first venture In the field of talking pictures...
...Pilate washed his hands of the affair...
...Need we give you our alibi for* not giving you the rest of Alibi...
...Jack Pearl, Aileen Stanley—who has begun broadcasting these days—Phil Baker and his volunteer-professional annoyers, will function at 12 midnight on Thursdays...
...1", the dances are in the music, and belong...
...Old Corbin was a rebel, too, as a lad— though he cannot rpmc-mber aginst Kvhat »The play takes its title from the remark "If you're not a Socialist before you're 25...
...1 Whenever the word albatross is mentioned, there is likely to come to mind an ancient mariner, and a. cross-bew...
...Mass Meet to Organize *Barlaa Hotel and Restaurant Works* A mass meeting of the CuuiiniNiW Progressive Women's Union wiH be SBs at 129 West IS6th street, Wednuua* May 15...
...Monday and Tuesday, May 6 and 7, "King of Kings...
...The John Drews of the Mississippi" and "The Mary Pickfords of the Chesapeake," however, are usually part owners and part profit sharers of the boats...
...The release of Universale million-dollars production will even more widely stimulate show boat interest...
...It is Jeff's come-on man, however (his son offstage, and author of this excitement) who is the real hero, and wins the almost stainless heroine...
...Pleasure Bound", at the Majestic, is the latest success to add a midnight performance to its schedule...
...Usually they are moved upstream —or down—at dawn to avoid the wind which with the mud bars are the chief menace to the high, box-like structure...
...N. C. Central Labor WW as U.TW...
...Jr., at the 49th Street, shows how obliging the police are, to allow a play to grow...
...Both present the characters as in life, following their own lines of thought and interest, instead of centering their conversation around one plot, and its two main figures...
...Always, however, the self-centered and self-satisfied laugh of the actress rings^n one's mind, hording the audience as it does the persons of the play—until, reflected in the mirrors of the several minds, we see the utmost depths of her shallow soul...
...And down the ages longer than anywhere else, the Freiburg Passion Play has remained religion, ha: kept its intent as reality...
...The responsibility bothered the Roman commander...
...Red Majesty...
...I The p'ay has a good idea...
...The pictu...
...Ufa's expert of scientific films...
...and drama was soon divorced from its literal significance as religious site and magic spell, to grow into the work of art But to the Inhabitants of Freiburg lc the Dark Ages, the neighboring Black Forest was a real home of terror...
...and that sends her son to seek freedom for his spirit, held subject to his mother's ambition and need to seem young, in the escape of death...
...Cabell has called it the greatest of romances, in a world where romance Is the force that drives men on...
...A much larger audience than that which filled every seat of the Apollo Theatre, Thursday night heard Ronald Colman in the opening of his new vehicle...
...There is something slightly amusing, slightly pathetic, touching in the fidelity of this town through the ages, and of the Fassnacht family foi centuries, to the sacred story...
...despite its color and incense, and the hypnotic tendency of choir and tuned Instruments of churchly sound, it is longdrawn and undramatic...
...The beginnings of the boat shows date back to the early years of American occupation of the Mississippi basin when N. M. Ludlow, an actor, having crossed the Blue Ridge Mountains to the tidewaters of the Cumberland where he built a crude lean-to on a kee-boat, floated down the Ohio and Mississippi with a frontier show...
...Always, in the promise of renewal or forgiveness, was the resurrection...
...Chapman's idea spread...
...The sound effects were perfect, but the honors fall to Chester Morris, a newcomer to the film firmament, who has made an impressive beginning and from whom we expect to hear a great deal in the near future...
...is it not the story of the despised son who...
...Crook pictures must still be in vogue, for at the 44th Street Theatre, the United Artist's picture...
...The notorious "agents provocateurs" of European spy systems, are their nearest fellows...
...The Captive Woman" now being offered at the Central Theatre appears to have settled down for a lengthly and well-deserved run...
...if you are a Socialist after you're 25...
...There...
...Rollo Wayne designed the settings...
...yoa have no head...
...there Satan took his holidays from hell;^and In the town cathedral the Passion Play was a real promise, a driving of feai from the citizens' hearts, and a celebration of the Saviour...
...A radio hook-up of 14 voices heard the talkie accompaniment to the picture...
...While dancing...
...FILMS: Silent and Sound "The Adventures of Maya," a film adaptation of Waldemar Bonsels' popular novel "The Bee Maya...
...The program at the Palace this week is unusually rich, as usual, in good talent...
...will hold over for a third and last v.eek at the 55th Street Playhouse beginning Saturday, May 4th...
...and it is good to be reminded that many of our most "respectable" families are no more than thieves in disguise...
...All this is very interesting folk-history...
...And the lovequest of the fair lady of this play proves eqally a will-o'-the-wisp, until she finds that the blue bird (In her case a canary) of happiness sings most sweetly in familiar woods...
...Roland West's direction and Chester Morris's performance as the "killer," Chick Williams, combined with the drama and suspense of the story, has won unanimous approval from the press...
...The Apaches Revenge" or "Jannings Ueber Alles...
...Thomas F McMahon <<**j United Textile Workers, has saasaaw the appointment of Pres...
...We shall be greatly disappointed If this section doesn't contain considerable praise of the work, next issue...
...I do not refer to the curious moves of censorship, but to the even more curious ways of the police on stage...
...They are therefore, as danced chiefly by J. Blake Scott and Felicia j Sorel, delightful...
...He was formerly a leading member and director of the First Studio of the Moscow Art Theatre...
...So do we tend to treat old fears...
...Two years ago, this branch of American theatre was practically unknown to the backwoodsman in its own country...
...These who need such a' pantomime with their music would probably do better without the music...
...naturally, confusion oi values in life...
...Large barns and small ones, town halls, theatres, lodge-rooms, canvas tents all were utilized for the temporary housing of the barnstorming players, for barnstormers they literally were...
...Barbara Bennett, talented daughter of Richard Bennett, is also featured...
...For the bourgeois Jews destroyed, not a radical, a disturber of their comfortable ways, but the Redeemer, who by His love would save mankind...
...ers in hotels and restaurants...
...As religion,"hespite the surge of spirit induced by the palm-branches and the eager throng/"at Christ's entrance to Jerusalem, it is not the word our hurried age can heed...
...gets lost, sets up a dummy 1 and knocks it down...
...Astute showmen realized that back country shekels were just as good and easier to get than coppers along the highways...
...This is a sane seelng-through the situation, which made us hope for a moment the lad would be more than the caricature he, and his one observed disciple, the butler, are made to appear...
...he later admits that he has all along felt like a "member of the Elks...
...The New Moon" has sold its French rights, but has postponed its American tour to continue at the Imperial in New York most of next winter...
...but when the work of art is confronted, the beholder must come to it without a handy guide...
...and "There It Is," a Charlie Bowers comedy...
...Snegoff directed the play...
...with this man's thriving the race grew strong...
...NEIGHBORLY ARTS A work of art is its own .explanation...
...Mary Rennels, the literary editor, presiding...
...Bulldog Drummond...
...Tuesday and Wednesday, May 8 and 9, "Submarine...
...No matinees...
...The film, produced over a period of eight months by Harold Noice, noted explorer, deals with the vast empire of the Tarianos in South America who have lived and practfeed Communism for centuries—long before white man enunciated these doctrines...
...Against a background of curtains the earnest work, especially cf the men playtrs, holds us to the problems suggested by the tale...
...he became the Paschal lamb, the scapegoat of his followers, dying to restore them to ultimate glory, repaid for their burdens on earth by their reward in heaven...
...More and more boats were built and the middle of the Nineteenth century saw the golden era for that type of entertainment which is having a romantic revival today...
...mwi Pres...
...Today the show boat in print, in film and on the stage is circling the globe...
...red Brown and G. French...
...you have no heart...
...he is, in short, likable but dumb...
...The theatre structure is slightly shorter and narrower, approximating the dimensions of a small town opera house...
...it builds a dummy of straw...
...But Jesus was caught by his followers into the annual Passover festival, then being celebrated...
...ji U.T.W...
...The story concerns a crook who marries a policeman's daughter...
...There are moments when the play threatens to lapse into too great a concern with Irlna's son and the romantic, then disillusioned yet still romantic, girl he loves...
...A mammoth show boat is 140 feet long with a 42 foot beam...
...The choruses of "The NewMoon" and "Follow Through" are going en masse to see "Moulin Rouge" at the Film Guild Theatre...
...will head the program...
...I hope that the playing of Till Eulenspiegel will not...
...The St...
...Only, to make sure he can do it, the stuffings are straw...
...young race-hero, the chosen son ol the father in heaven (the race-god) whose blood pulses in all his people...
...McMahon said his craaas^^ would not interfere in the Gestonta,>^ strike led by the Communist tile Workers Union...
...The Desert Song...
...The turninj of this not-evenhalf-baked radical into a sound conservative is supposed to be a happy ending...
...The weekly pay envelope ranges from thirty-five dollars to fifty dollars a week for a team, twenty-five for singles, and fifteen a week for the chorus...
...But it was not until a decade later when traveling - repertory companies took to i wagons, railroads, trucks, and any available form of transportation, that the boat show became a unique and colorful branch of the American theatre...
...No rehearsals after the first week...
...against all obstacles, wins to ultimate glory...
...the all singing, all-talking picture which the producers, the Warner Bros., announce as the first complete screen operetta, was heard for the first time in New York City Wednesday at the Warner Bros...
...Plske continue to lend vitality to her revival of "Mrs...
...The prior records of Gloria Swanson's "Sadie Thompson" and Harold Lloyd's "Speedy" were exceeded by "Coquette," which was seen and heard by 69.221 purchasers of tickets, during the first seven days of its run...
...Boat showmen owe a debt of gratitude to Edna Ferber for the nationwide interest aroused in the river entertainment...
...Incidentally, much of the beauty of the Passion Play is the work of this Russian choir...
...Until Edna Ferber seized upon the boat show and cloaked it in her imagination this institution and its river romance seems to have left little imprint upon American fiction...
...When Clement, tried , somehow in Chicago for publishing a ceni sored magazine in Connecticut, is told he will be let off if he promises not to issue the magazine while in Chicago— even though he has no intention of publishing the magazine in that city, he refuses to premise...
...The reconstruction of the theatre into templar tone, the miniature Holy City, the Russian Choir nucleus of the singing, the music, and the masses on the stage, are often beautiful, and probably sincere...
...il is the petty pride of the actress Irina that holds Nina's love from her in the country, and determines her toward the more immediate tragedy of her life: that makes her the center of gravity in the lives of her relations, retainers, and friends...
...what is lacking, as is further evidenced by the program "apology," is taste...
...Forbes Randolph's Kentucky Jubilee Singers will open at the Maxlne Elliot Theatre next Tuesday evening...
...as my companion doomed me, I inevitably summon up that red-headed I gargoyle who leaped forth when the motif was played in Richard Strauss' "Ein Heldenleben...
...This, while bowing to American democracy, is also a bid for permission to return to Soviet Russia, from which the organization has been barred...
...Plays and Players rpoO late for review this week, the A Grand Street Follies shot thelr rs upon the contemporary scene, at Booth Theatre...
...Following "The Adventures of Maya," the 55th Street Playhouse will present the movie-version of Edmond Rostand's famous play "Cyrano de Bergerac," performed by members of the Comedle Franiaise, and produced in -France and Italy...
...case of Enesco's "Roumanian Rhapsody...
...A wood-cut still exists of the first floating play-house invented, as it happened by an expatriated Englishman, Geoffrey Chapman, to play the Ohio-Mississippi waterways in 1827 but Chapman's looked more like a poorly constructed garage on a barge and had none of the elaborate pie-crust grillwork that has come to be associated with the theatre arks of stage and film fame...
...A be?, a scavenger beetle, a spider and a swarm of hornets are the main characters in this German production, which took four years to make...
...Wilfred Seagram, Samuel Schneider...
...Although motion pictures have invaded the backwoods towns, they are little competition to the show boat...
...It is a picture wellrounded with all the finished technique of modern movie-making...
...The" author himself supervised the picturization of this novel with the assistance of six cameramen and Arthur Thomalla...
...Elucidation of technical points, the development of an allegory, may awaken an understanding that will increase appreciation...
...the hero grew less potent in hi£ living, but in the self-sacrifice of his dying became the scape-goat, taking upor himself the sins and burdens of the race which might again (through the transfer of his power to a new hero) grow magnificent and strong...
...Kenyon Nicholson has an excellent group of nctors for what starts to be j a good plry...
...Jeff, for example, joins the respectable Strange family—which we discover with a shock is really a thieving gang—and helps them in their hauls for a couple of years before It is convenient for the -author to reveal that Jeff is really—oh, you know what cornea at the end...
...POLICE METHODS "The Come-On Man," by Herbert Ashton...
...On the night when both attend a theatre, a crime is committed...
...we make a semblance of them, and destroy it, to show symbolically how simple it is ;.o overcome the thing we dread thaving passed the sa*age state of belief that the burning of the symbol destroyed the object of our fear i. But our "unconscious'* cheats...
...Snegoff, Reginald Goode...
...Dressing rooms are at the rear of the stage and serve also as living quarters for the actors although the owners and occasionally the stars have comfortable, spacious rooms on the top deck with curtains as crisp as any land-lubber cottage...
...has captivated a large section of the discriminating movie-lovers and deserves a long run...
...A life part indolence, part adventure...
...As magic, working on the principle of association, the same play was the story ol the...
...APPOINTS OBGANH»»*J Pres...
...he does not marry Joan, not ^from "radical principle, but because they "just never got around to it...
...What more natural than for the rich and respectable to rid themselves of this trouble-maker...
...The First Law...
...The faultless and intelligent direction of Roland West should be a model to some of our other megaphone wlelders...
...Coquette," the Mary Pickford all-talking picture, was exceeded in weekly box office receipts at the Rivoli Theatre in New York by just one motion picture: "The Iron Mask...
Vol. 8 • May 1929 • No. 16
