New Plays in Manhattan

America's Sweetheart is notable if only for its refreshing little plot, which consistently refuses to run the usual course of musicomedies. The standard Act I finale finds the Boy and the Girl bitterly disappointed through some unfortunate misunderstanding, whereupon one or the other inevitably sings a snatch of the show's torch song and wanders hopelessly away. In America's Sweetheart, however, when Jack Whiting sees that his girl friend (Harriette Lake) is about to throw him over for a big cinemagnate, he breaks into a sullen soft-shoe dance with Gus Shy, the comic, and then irritably pushes Miss Lake into a fountain.

Another triumph for the peerless team of Fields, Rodgers & Hart, the plot is in the Once in a Lifetime manner, a succession of uncharitable laughs at the expense of Hollywood. Miss Lake and Mr. Whiting trek out from St. Paul to make good in the movies. Miss Lake--a lovely synthesis, one part Ginger Rogers, one part Ethel Merman--makes good first. Her fame permeates even the fastness of the Tennessee mountains, for in Scene 4 three backwoods girls (the talented, reedy-voiced Forman sisters) are aware that:

America has a sweetheart, America has a queen.

She has a chauffeur, An Argentine loafer.

She rules the silver screen.

As time wears on, however, Miss Lake finds that her fame is eclipsed by Mr. Whiting in the new talkies, a field of endeavor which a slight lisp makes impossible for her.

There is no outstanding comedy element in America's Sweetheart, although Gus Shy manages to be moderately amusing. But continual merriment arises from the excellent book Mr. Fields has provided. At one point a regiment of stately ladies in ermine appears. Pretty heads tossed back, they parade gracefully to the footlights, begin a song with: "We all got stinking last night."

Packed like honey in a hive are the sweet, nostalgic tunes of Messrs. Rodgers & Hart. Made to order for the grey tea-dance hour are: "I've Got $5" and "We'll Be The Same." All in all, America's Sweetheart is an uncommonly good musical show.

The collaboration of Composer Richard Rodgers, and Lyricist Lorenz Hart began in 1919 when they wrote the Columbia University 'varsity show directed and staged by Herbert Fields. The next year, when Mr. Rodgers was 17, they presented The Poor Little Ritz Girl, under the direction of Producer Lewis Marice "Lew" Fields, father of Librettist Herbert Fields. "Manhattan" and "Sentimental Me," two tuneful numbers in the Garrick Gaieties of 1925, made them. Since then the team, joined by the younger Fields, has turned out some of Broadway's freshest musicomedies: Dearest Enemy, The Girl Friend, Peggy Ann.

Doctor X. For reasons best known to himself, Dr. X, the criminologist, has assembled five total strangers who were once shipwrecked, it being his contention that the perpetrator of a shocking series of recent murders once experienced disaster at sea. Unfortunately, the good doctor neglects to include the real killer among his suspects. As a result, while the party is witnessing the re-enacting of the crime and being subjected to various guilt-detecting machines, quite a few people are slain. The play includes, of course, one lunatic, one scary maid, two lovers. Doctor X is not a first-rate mystery drama, but it frightens at times.

She Lived Next to the Firehouse. This burlesque reaches an eventful climax when a brigade of smoke-eaters, having individually secreted themselves in the home of a igth Century charmer, are roused out by a fire alarm, rush off to the blaze clad in long red-flannel underclothing. Main plot: a group of firemen are enamored of the lady who lives next door, court her privily when her husband (a traveling salesman) is away, are found out and have to explain their activities to their wives. To create atmosphere of the gay '90s, old wheezes are cracked, luxurious mustaches are twisted and two ancient steeds--Annie and Katie--gallop to a conflagration on a treadmill. The spectacle of funny, plump Victor Frederick Moore (Princess Charming, Hold Everything) in a fire chief's hat is worth the price of admission.

The Barretts of Wimpole Street. Not only has Playwright Rudolf Besier succeeded in presenting an interesting phase in the life of famed Poetess Elizabeth Barrett Moulton-Barrett, but he has artfully achieved an absorbing picture of gloomy Victorian domesticity. Wisely the play focuses its attention on the family life of the poetess, her two sisters, her six vague but stereotyped brothers who come to pay her dutiful calls in her sick room, her strange, unnatural father. Poet Robert Browning's courtship of Elizabeth is depicted in brief, brilliantly contrasting interludes.

All five scenes are laid in Elizabeth's bed-sitting-room where she has languished for years under her father's tyrannous love. It is here that Browning begins his deliberate and life-giving lovemaking, here that Father Barrett breaks each of his children one by one, here that Elizabeth becomes aware of her parent's mad, incestuous devotion to her. From this room she leaves 50 Wimpole Street forever, goes off to Browning and Italy.

As the withering poetess, Katharine Cornell turns in an extraordinarily delicate and restrained piece of acting. So convincing was her drinking of a detested pitcher of porter, so stirring her defense of a browbeaten sister, so moving her portrayal of an invalid who passionately wished but mortally feared to be a wife, that first night spectators yelled "Bravo!" as the final curtain fell.* The supporting cast is capable: Jo Mielziner has mounted the piece as picturesquely as a John Leech drawing. A small Cocker spaniel as Flush behaves admirably.

Katharine Cornell is 33, married to Director Guthrie McClintic. An immensely popular personality on the road, her virtuosity rather than her dramatic vehicles (The Green Hat, Dishonored Lady) make her a leading candidate for First Lady of the U. S. stage. The Barretts of Wimpole Street is her first venture into producing on her own. As befits an aspirant for First Ladyship, she contemplates producing more plays, perhaps forming her own company, doing Ibsen, Chekov. Her father, a Buffalo doctor, had never seen her in a first-night until last week.

*More learned enthusiasts, careful of their Italian "Braval" gender-endings, would have yelled:

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