Best Plays in Manhattan

SERIOUS

PORGY--Noisy, colorful Negro tragedy, brilliantly carried on by the Theatre Guild (TIME, Oct. 24).

COQUETTE--Familiar types--stern father, scapegrace lover, virgin daughter--in tragic and surprising play (TIME, Nov.21).

STRANGE INTERLUDE--Nine acts of Eugene O'Neill and the Theatre Guild (TIME, Feb. 13).

MELODRAMA

THE TRIAL OF MARY DUGAN--Sizzling statistics on chorus girls in court (TIME, Oct. 3).

THE SILENT HOUSE--Chinese mischief in London in which an idol shows his clutching claws (TIME, Feb. 20).

DIAMOND LIL--Crime and punishment, how it was practiced on the Bowery long ago (TIME, April 23).

THE FRONT PAGE. The new season's first hit--a press room piece, full of sound and flurry (TIME, Aug. 27).

FUNNY

THE ROYAL FAMILY--Marc Connelly and Edna Ferber smiling at the domestic antics of one of our theatrical first families (TIME, Jan. 9).

THE BACHELOR FATHER--A thoroughly immoral and entirely discreet comedy about an English squire who breeds not wisely but very well (TIME, March 12).

VOLPONE--Renaissance rascality in sumptuous settings (TIME, April 23).

MUSICAL

Optical topics for tropical weather:

Good News, A Connecticut Yankee, Show Boat, Rain or Shine, Blackbirds of 1928 George White's Scandals, The Vanities.