New Plays in Manhattan

Take a Chance (book by Bud G. De Sylva & Laurence Schwab; music by Nacio Herb Brown, Richard Whiting. Vincent Youmans; Laurence Schwab, producer) is fast, noisy, funny. It reverts to the pre-Depression type of musicomedy, makes no pretense of smartness but loses no entertainment value by its atavism. Buried in a torrent of gags, girls and Jew blues is a plot: a Harvardman, trying to cash in on his Hasty Pudding Club theatrical experience, woos and wins a lowly dancer whose fortune two shoe-string impresarios try to promote. No Harvardman was ever more blond and decorous than Jack Whiting (America's Sweetheart). No impresarios were ever more feverishly active than droll, cow-eyed Jack Haley (Free For All), and hook-nosed Sid Silvers, who used to sit in an upper box and insult Phil Baker. Cropping out here & there in the proceedings is curvesome, loud-shouting Ethel Merman (Zimmerman).

Funniest situation: Messrs. Haley & Silvers finding themselves recuperating from a-- pair of dreadful hangovers in the same bed. Most amusing lyric, sung by Miss Merman in a levee resort:

Eadie was a lady

Though her life was shady.

Though her life was merry

She had savoir fairey.

Eadie had class With a cap-i-tul K. . . .

There are other good songs ("I Got Religion," "Should I Be Sweet?") but "Smoothie," rendered by Mr. Haley and Miss Merman, consistently manages to stop the show to the embarrassment of Funnyman Silvers whose adjacent skit begins with his being kicked out of a saloon. The first two nights he was kicked out eight times. Take a Chance affords capital amusement--with a cap-i-tul K.

The Mad Hopes (by Romney Brent; Bela Blau. producer). From Romney Brent, a mad little player, could well be expected a mad little play. Pomposity is a Brent specialty, and the name of his heroine, an extremely fey matron, keys the whole comedy--Clytemnestra Hope.

Her long-suffering husband dropped dead in his soup plate when she absentmindedly toasted Germany at a dinner in the Russian Embassy. The play finds Clytemnestra, her two antic sons and more sensible daughter inhabiting their villa at Nice, broke. Even the daughter's practical U. S. suitor cannot keep Mrs. Hope from buying on credit everything she fancies, blackmailing the maid out of back wages, formulating grandiose schemes for selling "her poor little home" to an unborn literary club. With a pleasantly insane gleam in her eyes, she falls out with everyone, instantly makes up does housework in a white satin ball gown, frequently retires to her bedroom and communicates with her children on postal cards carried by the maid. An amiable rich Jew. whom she thinks "so Oriental." finally appears to solve her difficulties.

Violet Kemble Cooper bustles through the delicate, amusing fabric of the piece with great success. The Mad Hopes warrants a visit if only to hear her gravely remark over a telephone: "Shakespeare? --yes--yes--very talented."

Gay Divorce (libretto by Dwight Taylor; words & music by Cole Porter; Dwight Deere Wiman, producer). For this bright little musicomedy Composer Porter (The New Yorkers), whom Yalemen remember as the author of "Bulldog, Bull-dog," has written some of his most beguiling melodies and lyrics. Sample :

In Italy, from Rome to Pisa,

Every man has on his knees a

Private little Mona Lisa.

The book is a family affair, something that Dwight Taylor found in the trunk of his late great stepfather. J. Hartley Manners, and renovated with the help of Samuel Hoffenstein (Poems in Praise of Practically Nothing). Very little attention is paid to it when dapper Fred Astaire, separated from his sister Lady Cavendish for the first time, is talking, dancing or singing with willowy, sexy Claire Luce.

The halting little tale which Gay Divorce has to tell relates the adventures of a young man who finds himself at an English seaside resort pining for the girl he spent a day with a fortnight before, after which she vanished. Her sudden reappearance is fraught with complications, since she is bent on getting a divorce on the strictly technical grounds of adultery and soon is under the delusion that her young man is the professional corespondent for whom she is waiting. Dancer Astaire, the young man. only once loses his temper with Miss Luce, the extremely tempting young woman. With the assistance of Mr. Porter, he outlines some of her bad points :

You don't sing enough,

You don't dance enough,

You don't drink the great wines of France enough.

Thin, unfunny in spots and marred on the premiere by the brandied roarings of a number of Mr. Astaire's fashionable friends, Gay Divorce nevertheless provides a generous measure of polite entertainment. Luella Gear, cast as Actress Luce's guide, philosopher and friend, is dryly humorous, sings one funny song about a "brave young American girl of 37" who proclaims herself "true to the Red. White & Blue" at a Communist gathering, another about an unfortunate family of Fitches. Eric Blore plays an amusing barman.

The Great Magoo (by Gene Fowler & Ben Hecht; Billy Rose, producer). Broadway, Burlesque, Privilege Car, Lily Turner led a diminishingly interested theatrical public behind the scenes of a night club, a burlesque show, a circus, a medicine show. With one savage sweep, hard-boiled Messrs. Fowler & Hecht have cleaned up the list by setting their play in a sideshow, musicomedy rehearsal hall and flea circus. What happens: A barker (Paul Kelly), who considers all women "magoos" (unflattering sideshow epithet), finally falls in love with a carnival queen (Claire Carlton). When ambition leads her to throw in her lot with a theatrical "angel," Actor Kelly takes to drink. When she turns out to be a dramatic failure, she takes to prostitution. In the end love conquers all.

Characteristic sequence in this vulgar, undistinguished, gratuitously profane presentation: Actor Kelly ingeniously seducing a woman whose flagpole-sitting lover has a searchlight trained on her bed.

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