NEWS AND COMMENT OF THE THEATRE
News And Comment of the Theatre The Stage Music A Cart of Rotten Apples Shaw's New Play Worships Benevolent Tyranny By Henry W. Nevinson MALVEKN tau long suffered the unfortunate...
...If Shaw's despot turns out to be neither wise nor benevolent, the only way is to cut off his head, a violent and almost obsolete measure in this country...
...The offer is, to fact, a demand, and the poor conscientious and strangely innocent King is thrown into the second great perplexity that confronts him during the play...
...Warren's Profession," "John Bull's Other Bland...
...Handling people" is Delancey's great accomplishment, he assures his highly skeptical family a number of times...
...Ot coarse, monarchy wins hands down, though the actual position Is left nominally unchanged at the last To myself,1 who try to retain a belief to democracy, freedom and the popular Government, this, the main doctrine of the play, appears pernicious...
...Looking nack at "Greeft Scott" we carsaot decide with confidence whether Mr...
...The program far Wednesday and Thursday is also a double feature one...
...Adolphe Menjou in his latest and most sophisticated comedy, "Fashions in Love" and Winard Mack's thrilling drama of the underworld, "The Voice of the City," .cake up the program for Monday and Tuesday, September 9 and 10...
...Even Adam himself loved Eve, ta that beautiful Garden of Eden, but as history tell us that Eve was the cause of all the troubles of poor old Adam...
...No, not to Trafalgar Square or the House of Commons...
...I had hoped that Ortothia (played by that exquisite actress, Edith Evans) would have taken some part In upsetting the apple cart...
...Koch aimed to write a satirical comedy, or was serious to his business of explaining this New Capitalism whereby the boss supplies cleaner factories, flower-bedded factory yards and trees under the windows of the plants from which "the birdies can sing little songs over the throb of the machines...
...If history is right, which we all believe it is, then this man must have at least twenty times more troubles than old Adam...
...On the same program...
...The one connected theme in a somewhat confusing play is his idea that employers have got to give the workers more of the pretty little things of life if he wants to allay unrest and speed up production...
...Can it be that a brief experience of modem comforts to Italy has so changed his whole outlook upon society and politics, that he la now ready to abandon those principles for which we have battled so long...
...What a queer knktoTf lot...
...Yet, it has happened that mot have tried to live with, keep and admire many women at the same time...
...The Chessplayer,'' an outstanding French, film, dealing with incidents ta a Polish Revolution...
...Docks of Marseilles," a French "avantgarde" film, directed by Albert Oavalcanti and starring Katherine Heeslrng, ¦ who played Nana ta the French film version of Zola's novel...
...Beautiful Women And Beautiful Gowns Ever since the days of Adam women have been the stimulating charm of the lives of men...
...The place is the established home of modern comfort, combined with the nursery of real or imaginary disease...
...These bells, \ three in number weighing 800 pounds each, were Imported and used by Mr...
...Monarchy vs...
...But instead of practicing his ideas of new industrial fraternity, he is consigned to teaching in the local high school...
...Shaw throws all the weight of his dialectic on the side of benevolent monarchy...
...Gest ta his production of "The Miracle" and are the only ones of their kind ta existence in this country today...
...In some forty years he has affected a revolution so vast that political revolutions and changes of Government are dwarfed to comparison, and Mat Sunday we witnessed the revolution's out said and visible sign...
...But, since the days of Adam men have learned to love...
...If he was spoofing, why did he end on the final touching news that Delancey's ideas have made the can factory pay a profit for the first time In years...
...differently, many of them admiring and loving more than one woman, ta fact, some of them have tried to out-do a King who reigned a few thousand years ago...
...55th St...
...In her place we are shown the virtuous Queen Jemima, who knits and listens quietly, as every virtuous Queen should, and, apparently, has no notion that her royal husband, leads a strangely innocent life elsewhere...
...Vilma .Banky's first dialogue picture "This Is Heaven," win be shown...
...And to illustrate further a story of the Leo de Valery comedy drama which win open at the Gansevoort Playhouse to Greenwich Village on Monday, September 9th, the man of the play endeavors to love, gown and entertain eighteen beautiful women at the same time...
...Seventeen Years Old" (tentative title), a German film dealing with tragic Incidents of high school lite...
...Playhouse Announces Plans For New Season Martin Lewis, director of the pobheity of that intimate little theatre, the aSth Street Playhouse, baa forwarded to us the heetre*s plans for the coming season...
...Benevolent Tyranny It is about a year I suppose since Shaw first turned his admiration to Mussolini, and his form of benevolent tyranny...
...Such an impossible set of duds I have never seen...
...B Btmwad me to aee the distant interest of the Malvern population watching...
...We print below what Mr...
...The week began with a private performance of Shaw's latest play, "The Apple Cart," given for the first time in England, but . given a few months ago in Warsaw...
...Miss Moore was brought up ta the atmosphere of the stage, for her parents owned a theatre to London and she appeared with them occasionally and knew intimately many celebrities who were friends of her family...
...This is where I call the moral of the play pernicious...
...Z aim i tail to aee again a tall, slim figure, who came to London from Dublin nearly 90 years ago, and, like myself, was t***1fTy °h to the skirts ot literature and Journalism...
...In the second act this want of connection is glaring...
...If he was serious, why did he make Delancey so ridiculous...
...and he surely did have his worries and his mis-understandings of that one woman...
...6th...
...While she was attending school at Hampshire, England, her father died...
...I need not say the political atmosphere Is Intensely Conservative, and it 1* significant that when I drove through tt five years ago with the present Prime Minister during his first term of office...
...She then went on tour with Dennis Eadle in "The Eternal Spring," and then came her first leading role when she played the title character ta "Polly&nna" on tour...
...That was the wonder revealing the powers ot an unconquerable mind and the ultimate laasssntldaneai of the human spirit...
...In order to provide the patrons of the Capitol Theatre with the unusual ta music, we have secured, through the courtesy of Morris Oest, famous producer and friend of Yasha Bunchuk, the original Russian bells for use ta this spectacular musical symphony...
...I do not like to upset the apple cart, and I wish with all my heart I could put tt on a level with Shew* noblest work—such dramas as "Mrs...
...our large party as we erne* ged from the hoodon train...
...He does not resolve this perplexity, nor does he resolve the main question that the play suggests...
...With Orete Mosheim and Adalbert Schletiow...
...George Playhouse win present "Through the Death Deserts of Asia'* on its week-end program, Satuafsy and Sunday, September 7 and 8. The picture is a filming of an adventurous and hazardous two-year expedition to the unknown regions of Tibet and Mongolia...
...B was fixed upon by Sir Barry Jtssksoo, I ttmpoas, aa being convenient lor the Repertory Theatre at Birmtaghetn, winch he has supported with the ssrwh geueiuaity of hit wealth...
...It was here alone out of all ssnyiavTMi that he was received with boos and cries of execration...
...I can think of no model ii prophet who has swept away so much accepted rubbish and cleared the air of so much cant...
...With Irene Vanbrugh she appeared ta "All the King's Horses" to London and when the general strike closed that production, she took to driving her car and giving people lifts* to various places...
...noted UFA director, with Lulae Brooks (her first appearance to German films) and Frits Kortner...
...A Royal Scandal," hailed as the best GermarAmade film satire and adapted from Sternhehn's successful comedy "Die Hose," with Werner Krauts and Jenny Jugo, UFA stars...
...Directed by George Aaagaroff...
...But when I looked at the aarsatrartums, the rnbstsnthil villas, the gardens and carefully-trimmed lawns, the bag hotels, and other evidences of smug prosperity, it was not ot the Intellectual crowd that I waa thinking...
...A few years later he began to emerge with "Widowers' Houses," and since then he hat emerged indeed I Sign of BevoinUen I have long considered his the finest critical mind in Europe...
...AU the tyrants In Europe win delight to the play...
...Star* and Stripe* The other episode to the play which has little, it any, connection with the main theme, is the sudden appearance of the American Ambassador, dressed in the stars and stripes of an old-fashioned caricature of Uncle Sam, bringing a message from the President, to which he proposes the reunion of the United States with the British Empire...
...It is a good description of these uniformed duds...
...It seemed to me badly constructed k> it* dramatic form and pernicious to SB moral...
...In one of the too few really witty sayings to the play, he describes a Cabinet as an overcrowded third-class carriage...
...Inaugurating its fan and winter season, the 55th Street Playhouse win present the German picturization of Max Brod's romantic novel, "Three Lores," iegtantag Saturday...
...This idea Is conveyed through the many interminable speeches of Delancey Scott (played by Ray Harper) Just home from some New England college and bursting with knowledge of Latin, psychology, college cheers and industrial psychology...
...The Little Match Girl," from Hans Anderson's fairy tale, produced by Neofllms ta France with Katherine Hee*ling...
...It was as one of the lost boys ta "Peter Pan" that Miss Moore made her real stage debut during one of the Christmas revivals of this play at the St...
...Great Scott" Is A Confusing Play About Industry The first venture of Mr...
...One after another his plays and the prefaces to his plays have laid bare the falsities and hypocrisies and boastful pretentions of our time...
...We are there shown the King of England some thirty years hence, engaged in a lover's ruarrel with Ortothia, whom one would without hesitation describe aa hit mistress, if we were not most strangely informed that their relationship 1* "strangely Innocent...
...Democracy That question is whether a benevolent monarchy Is not a better form of government than a democracy in which the citizens share through the franchise...
...When her mother produced and starred ta "Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary" ta London, Miss Moore appeared with her and then she supported Marie Tempest ta "Hay Fever" for ten months...
...L. A. Saltan's new "Showshop," which plans to add six productions to New York's theatrical fare this season, is a play which deals with the relation of employee to employer...
...The foUowtag holiday season, she again appeared in the same play...
...Through the Death Deserts of Asia," at the St...
...Men ot today have the Idea that one woman Is not enough, they too, must have several ta order to try and keep up the pace set by King Solomon...
...To iiitanlf that was the miracle...
...No such luck...
...King Magnus, the despot, would be responsible to no one, and his benevolence must be taken on trust—a trust all the more shaky because his despotism is hereditary...
...a German Terra Film, entirely enacted by a cast of boys and girls, and adapted from Wilhelm Speyert novel "Der Kampf der Tertia...
...As to Shaw's burlesque of Boanerges, the Labor member of the Cabinet, that sort of person is as obsolete as Charles the First's head, and should be kept out of any play by a man of Shaw's genius...
...The Weavers," the screen version of Gerhard Hauptmann's revolutionary play, directed by Frtedrich Zelnick to Germany for First National, with Paul Wegener, wilhelm Dleterle and George John...
...fiiag Prosperity T*t this waa the place fixed upon for a ytfjttvml Week in honor of Bernard Shear...
...The theare goers can both see the beautiful women, eighteen of them to the latest things ta gowns and hats, aU of them accomplished actresses ta a situation as mentioned above In Leo de Vatery's latest comedy-drama, "A Comedy of Women...
...I am not narrowly sceptical, but there are some thing* I cannot believe, no matter how strongly asserted However, though the innocence has no face value whatever, let us leave It at its face value, at we leave the King and Ortothia rolling together in a struggle upon the floor, while one of the King's secretaries pulls, the door open and discreetly retires...
...Imagine If you will what it would cost to buy beautiful gowns for eighteen stunning ladies, and the arguments the poor feUow would get into after he had bought them...
...By his own sheer genius, by courage and persistence, that active and tawny figure has ratted himself to such a fame and has infliwriced the mind of the country so deeply that we were holding a Festival Week to hie honor, and the festival was to be held to a model centre of selfsatisfaction and comfortable torpor...
...a German Terra Film, dealing wtth the French Revolution, with Frits Kortner and Karina Ben...
...Those are the authors, dramatists, critics, actors and the rest...
...She never appears and Is never mentioned again...
...Republic of Youth...
...Nocturne," a French film starring Racquel MeUer...
...But for the play Itself...
...Idlers and people of independent mean* have occupied it...
...George The St...
...The Italian Straw Hat," a French film satire, directed by Renee Clair, prominent member of the "avant-garde" movement, starring Olga Tachechowa...
...Or is this, after an only the natural result of the old Fabian doctrine of government by "experts " It was a doctrine that always depressed and terrified me, but even an "expert" is to some extent responsible to the people who appoint him and keep him in office...
...Bunchuk to Conduct Capitol Grand Orchestra Yasha Bunchuk, and his famous Capitol Grand Orchestra presents a thrilling - ly spectacular and dramatic overure, "The Glory of Russia," at the Capitol Theatre beginning Friday (Sept...
...It embodies all the mysteriousness, majesty and heart-stirring appeal of the finest Russian music and we hope it win meet with the approval and pleasure of he music-loving public...
...And he shows that owing to America's money and power it would be very difficult for the English King to refuse the offer, even though it might entail the removal of the Empire's capital from London to Washington or Dublin...
...The Tragedy of Love," starring Emil Jennings and directed by Joe May, who was responsible tor "Homecoming," the UFA production...
...James Theatre in London...
...This overture was compiled by Yasha Bunchuk from ancient Russian melodies and folk-songs many of which have never been heard to this country, and arranged by Leo Zeltlta of the Capitol Theatre music staU, and is a stupendous masterpiece of symphonic arrangement and conception...
...It seemed bsdy constructed In that tech of Its three acts ran upon a septate idea with hardly any connection between them...
...AndrocMt," ''Fanny's First Play," or "Saint Joan.'* I am sorry: I think most ot us present were sorly, but "The Apple Cart" Is not on that level...
...So these are the lntelsaetoahV* they seemed to be saying...
...After "Three Loves" the following Continental motion picture* nave been secured for their American Premiere showing at the 55th Street Playbouse ta the i-raning months: t "Meisterstager," the screen version of Richard Wagner's opera, produced ta Germany by Ludwig Berger, Paramount director, with Rudolf Rittner, Gustav ProehUch and Maria Solvejk, "Pandora's Box," from Frank Wedektad's drama "Lulu," directed by O. W. Pabst...
...He was a striking figure, tawny from head to toot, his hair and beard tawny, his clothes tawny, his shirt tawny, and I have little doubt his boots were tawny, though I think he never wore sandals Keen and alert he ranged about the British Museum Reading Room, studying music, I suppose, studying Karl Marx, preparing for his early book, "An Unsocial Socialist," for his early Fabianism, and his musical and dramatic criticism...
...He shows us the wise, considerate and thoughtful King, highly educated, a master of argument (acted, by the way, with Incomparable skin by Cedric Hardwlcke), and he confronts this modest and gentlemanly person with a gang of foots and knaves who represent the Cabinet...
...Wedding ot the Revolution...
...Thunder," in which Lon Cheney takes the role of a railroad engineer and "The Younger Generation," adapted from Fannie Hurst'* story, Tt B To Laugh," ate ths features on that program...
...The Romance ot Hine Moa," produced by British Instructional from a New Zealand legend and enacted entirely by native Maoris...
...If Shaw chooses to represent monarchy by a man of singular charm and wisdom, and democracy by such a herd of imbeciles, of course, the triumph of monarchy or benevolent despotism is assured...
...All the worse, at the present time when despotism has raised its head again in most European countries...
...The following season, she toured to several plays and then appeared ta "Puss In Boots" at the Apollo Theatre ta London...
...Anyway, Delancey marries the boss' daughter...
...No other critic on religion, pontics, science or society has been so acute, so courageous, so sincere...
...The acting honors m the play go to Millard F. MitcheU, who acts the laconic, hard-working brother of Delancey...
...If they are right or wrong the writer cannot say, but it Is obvious that, if one woman was enough for Adam, one should be enough for any of the men of the present day...
...Lewis believes ¦o be an unusually fine and diversified rroup of films...
...To make the parallel complete two women have been crowded In, one apparently better suited for the comic opera stage, the other the only serious member of the Cabinet, but hysterical and silly beyond feminine nature...
...News And Comment of the Theatre The Stage Music A Cart of Rotten Apples Shaw's New Play Worships Benevolent Tyranny By Henry W. Nevinson MALVEKN tau long suffered the unfortunate reputation of being a health resort—unfortunate because invalids...
...Jill Moore Follows A Family Tradition It was almost inevitable that Jill Esmond Moore, the young ringij^h leading woman in John Drtokwater's comedy, "Bird ta Hand," which Lee Shubert is presenting at the Barrymore Theatre, should adopt the stage as a career, for her father was H. V. Esmond, the famous actor and playwright, and her mother is Eva Moore, the wen-known English actress...
...Great Scott," on which the first curtain rose at the Forty-ninth Street Theatre this week, might thus be called a play about labor, if not a labor playHoward Koch wrote "Great Scott...
...In the play he tries to admire them all, but fails with them all individually and gets himself Into situations that would turn the hardest critic to roars of laughter...
...The Glory of Russia" a twelve minute production will be heard In America for the first time at this theatre...
...Companionate Divorce," a UFA comedy, with Lillian Harvey and Harry Halm...
...Her parentage alone would seem to have destined her for the theatre, but with having W. S. GUbert, of Gilbert and Sullivan fame, for a god-father and Maxine Elliott as her godmother, it appeared there could be no doubt about the matter and from her earnest years she decided that her future lay to the theatre...
Vol. 9 • September 1929 • No. 5
