New Play

The Devil Within is one of those melodramas where the individual auditor is expected to curl up like a piece of burnt leather and crumble away with excitement. On the opening evening, professional observers refused to do this, owing to their long stern schooling in the mystery melodrama. The hide of an accomplished critic will not curl. Ordinary observers were reported to have curled slightly. In the last act, some of them even crumbled.

Leading to this last act were two of the conventional settings in which the wicked and black-browed millionaire was murdered on the eve of his wedding. Of the dozen or two people in the play, nearly every one was suspected at one time or another; but the burden of suspicion fell on a discarded mistress, her two sons, a Kaffir servant and a stout Irishwoman included in the name of comedy. All these and the others were collected in the final scene before the District Attorney, who proceeded to carve out the culprit in time for an eleven o'clock curtain. No notable acting enlivened these proceedings, though the general average was steadily good enough.

Alexander Woollcott--"Doubtless he [the author, Charles Horan, a cinema director] felt The Devil Within to be a bit thick for the movies, so he made it into a play."

Quinn Martin--"A mystery melodrama in the pink of condition."