Smalltown Actress

PRESENTING LILY MARS--Booth Tarkington--Doubleday, Doran ($2.50). Author Tarkington's memory, straying fondly over his own early love for the stage, has lingered long enough to inspire a sentimental romance about the U. S. theatre some 20 years ago. Presenting Lily Mars concerns a Southern smalltown girl whose untutored genius as an actress the story never manages to make remotely plausible. Flirtatious Lily had never gone further than high school lessons in elocution, consequently enjoyed a fixed conviction that she was destined for high success on the New York stage. Her conviction is stubbornly shared by her down-at-heel family and by Mrs. Gilbert, a family friend whose son Owen is a playwright. When Owen returns home on vacation before the rehearsals of his new play, his mother tries to get him to give Lily a part. Lily suggests that he rewrite the play to do so. Eventually, in spite of Owen's passive obstruction, she manages to win the affections of Harvey, the hard-boiled director, and wriggles into the cast. When the play reaches New York, after a singularly hectic routine of rehearsals and road showings, Lily has stolen from the leading lady not only her role, but her fiance, who happens to be leading man. On the eve of the play's first showing in New York, she quits the cast, with an elaborate display of heroism, in favor of the leading lady, and returns to her home. The play is nevertheless a success, but the manager and the playwright ignore it to hurry after her with separate proposals of marriage. Surprisingly, the manager arrives first. Years of novelizing have given Booth Tarkington a glib though obvious technic which he employs with smooth professional skill. Lily Mars repeats his familiar formula of the heroine who is gaily and innocently wanton, and much better at heart than she lets on to be. Not stage people but marionettes are the characters of this book, jiggling from visible wires.

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