New Plays in Manhattan

20th Century (by Ben Hecht & Charles MacArthur; George Abbott & Philip Dunning, producers). Even if it did take two years to write the third act, this muscular successor to Messrs Hecht & MacArthur's Front Page was well worth the wait. It is the saga of one wild trip, on the New York Central's crack Chicago-New York train. Aboard is Oscar Jaffe (Moffat Johnson), an intentionally composite reproduction of Morris Gest and the late David Belasco, an ill-kempt maestro whose last three durbars have just about bankrupted him. In the adjoining compartment is Lily Garland (pretty Eugenie Leontovich of Grand Hotel), a diva who has deserted the arms and managership of Producer Jaffe to win from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences a gold-plated statue, which she fondles like a doll.* It is the desperate ambition of the producer, his pressagent-- a violent man who at one point threatens to eat the porter's buttons off--and his conniving business manager, to woo Lily Garland back into the hard-up Jaffe firm. Also on the train are two timid Mann Actors, a pair of bewildered Nuremberg Passion Players, a religious maniac who goes furtively about pasting holy writ on people's hats.

Just as things look blackest for Producer Jaffe, the little lunatic gives him a large check to produce a Passion Play of his own with the still suspicious actress to be cast as Magdalen. The maestro flies into a frenzy of activity, wires John Ringling for camels, elephants and an ibis, wants to locate the Sultan of Turkey to hire his dervishes.

"We'll want Richard Strauss to do the incidental music," he mutters. "Is he alive?"

"I don't know," says the hard-boiled pressagent. "I'll ask the conductor."

Follows the revelation of the backer's mental condition, another breakup with the temperamental actress, a shot, the rough-riding plot's final solution.

"What kind of a trip did you have?" a Grand Central gateman asks the 20th Century's conductor.

"My God! With Livingstone through Darkest Africa!"

Goodbye Again (by Allan Scott & George Haight; Arthur J. Beckhard, producer). When the curtain rises on Good-bye Again, lean Osgood Perkins, a matinee idol for men, is discovered trying to get himself out of a twin bed in Cleveland's Statler Hotel. He is an author-lecturer named Bixby, traveling in the intimate company of his secretary, handsome and sardonic Sally Bates. While the secretary is out, a bit of the lecturer's past slips into his room in the person of Julia Wilson (Katherine Squire). Mrs. Wilson went to college with Mr. Bixby, and on one memorable occasion he seduced her in the shadows of the Mortimer memorial arch. She would like to renew the acquaintance. After he places her, he would like to too. By the time quizzical Husband Wilson (Leslie Adams) turns up, they have departed for the country. Mr. Wilson and the secretary settle down to a twelve-hour wait. By midnight, Mr. Wilson has become mellowed with rye whiskey. "I am a Republican," he confesses. "Always was, always will be. ... My father was a Republican. . . . His father was a Republican--I don't know why I tell you all this. . . ."

By the time the erring pair return and interested in-laws gather, the situation has gotten almost beyond resourceful Actor Perkins. He marches across the stage, points a righteous thin finger at his accusers. It takes his tolerant 'secretary's forgiveness and a wandering small boy to pull him out of an imminent mess.

Producer Beckhard has given this chipper comedy shrewd direction and casting. Statler Hotel Co. provided the room's furnishings, asked that the play be changed so that their bellhop was not portrayed actually selling liquor, did not seem to mind an unmarried couple occupying a Statler double room. Honeymoon (by Samuel Chotzinoff & George Backer; produced by Harold Stone) is a loquacious comedy which somehow never becomes as amusing as you hope it will. In it is ingratiating, puppylike Ross Alexander as a young man who is visiting Paris with a new wife whom he is beginning to find very trying. They are staying at the apartment of his bride's kinswoman (Katherine Alexander), a nobly understanding beauty who ably substitutes when the bride goes off to Nice in a huff. Also in the cast is Thomas Mitchell (Clear All Wires), the obliging hostess' burly ex-husband. To him, a quixotic race-track habitue with a curious interest in Scandinavian tongues, goes the brightest irrelevancy in the play: "Do you speak Swedish? . . . Neither do I. ... Hard to find anyone who speaks Swedish."

Shuffle Along of 1933 (words & music by Flournoy Miller, Eubie Blake, Noble Sissle; George E. Wintz, producer). A decade ago Shuffle Along whetted the public appetite for Negro musical shows, provided one excellent explanation of why darkies were born. Two memorable numbers from Shuffle Along were "Love Will Find a Way" and "I'm Just Wild About Harry."

Plot of Shuffle Along of 1933 concerns the adventures of a pair of high-yallers who invade Jimtown, Miss, and almost wreck the fortunes of the U-Eat-Em molasses factory and its honest, dusky directorate. While this is going on a black clown named George McClennon manages to stop the show with an eccentric dance, plays "Sore Foot Blues" on an E-flat clarinet. Noble Sissle's eminently satisfying band, directed by Eubie Blake, renders two appealing songs: "Dusting Around," "Here Tis."

*The statue could have been the one Playwright Hecht won for 1928 or the one Playwright MacArthur's wife (Helen Hayes) won for 1932.

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