New Plays in Manhattan

Nine new shows and two repertory companies (Walter Hampden & Ruth Draper) opened on Broadway last week. Not since 1927 had the Christmas-New Year week been so packed with premieres. And not since 1927, when Show Boat, Paris Bound and The Royal Family had their first nights, had the holidays produced such high calibre entertainment. By the end of the week, only three of Manhattan's 43 theatres were dark.

Thumbs Up (Eddie Dowling, producer) is almost official enough to be mentioned as TUA. Administrator of the proceedings is Eddie Dowling (Joseph Nelson Edward Goucher), President Roosevelt's favorite actor and head of the entertainment division of the 1932 Democratic Campaign Committee. Early last summer Eddie Dowling announced himself as a candidate for the Democratic Senatorial nomination from Rhode Island. Persuaded to abandon this ambition, he took the stump in Pennsylvania, helped swing that State to the New Deal. In turn, rich New Dealers like Vincent Astor lent a hand in promoting Mr. Dowling's new $250,000 show. At its Philadelphia premiere, Pennsylvania's Democratic Governor-elect Earle & friends were on hand to cheer their theatrical colleague. At the Manhattan opening, Postmaster General Farley and the young James Roosevelts represented the official family.

What "General" Farley and the Roosevelts saw was unquestionably worth the trip to New York. Only occasionally is Producer Dowling on view, for that old-time song-&-dance man (Follies) modestly limits his appearance to a few skits. But his wife, little Ray Dooley, has all sorts of funny things to do. At one point she is hoisted to the top of a pyramid formed by half a dozen jibbering Arab tumblers. Teetering just under the proscenium arch, she is the picture of comic terror. Again, as an aged Merry Widow, she is tossed all over the stage by a full chorus, while irrepressible Bobby Clark (& McCullough) leads her through a bumbling waltz.

Bobby Clark has been deprived of his cane in Thumbs Up. His gadget this year is a hollow cigar through which he peppers court attendants with spitballs from the bench as he presides over a murder trial. He also plays Senator Screwy Short from Louisiana, and a pathetic character who wanders into a Communist printing plant to get a poster made for a lodge dance. Despite his repeated protests, "We just want to dance!" the poster he finally gets demands that all the lodge members meet in Union Square, march up Fifth Avenue, fight the police.

Billed as "A Show For Every Member Of The Family," and "The Greatest Galaxy Of Stars Ever Assembled." Thumbs Up comes close to making good on both boasts. What little dirt there is is pay dirt, and Producer Dowling has prodigally hired for his richly-set circus: clowns (Miss Dooley & Mr. Clark), dancers (Paul Draper & Hal Le Roy), singers (the Pickens Sisters & J. Harold Murray), travesty artists (Sheila Barrett & Eddie Garr).

Best tunes: "Zing, Went the Strings of My Heart," "I've Got To See A Man About His Daughter."

Birthday (by Aimee & Philip Stuart; Harmon & Ullman, producers). How does a sensitive child feel when her widowed mother decides to remarry? According to the playwrighting Stuarts, it depends on the character of the child. When Jennifer Lawrence (Peggy Wood) agrees to marry Sir John Corbett (Louis Calhern). her younger daughter. Baba. is thoroughly pleased. Baba (11-year-old Jeanne Dante, in her third play) is a pudgy little hedonist, fond of chocolates and a general good time. Sir John wins her affection easily with a theatre party and promises to teach her to play golf, sail a boat, ride a pony.

With Irene, who has just had her 16th birthday, it is different. She likes Sir John well enough but the notion of his sharing her mother's bed fills her with repugnance and horror. Irene has been deluded into believing that her mother's first marriage was a happy one. When Sir John and Mrs. Lawrence go off to be wed at his country place. Irene slips out into the February night to drown herself in the Thames. She changes her mind but almost freezes to death in the process. It takes the combined reasoning of Sir John, her frantic mother, her grandmother, her sister and the family physician to bring Irene to face the situation realistically.

Every bit as sound in its child psychology as the less wholesome Children's Hour (TIME, Dec. 3). Birthday boasts a stageful of convincing actors. As Irene. Antoinette Cellier repeats her London success, is a properly moody adolescent. Producers Harmon & Ullman have provided a fairly credible London scene which will be completely so when they tear the NRA label out of Baba's school coat.

The O'Flynn (libretto, lyrics & music by Brian Hooker, Russell Janney & Franklin Hauser; Russell Janney, producer) is the first musical romance to reach Broadway since last winter's Richard of Bordeaux (TIME, Feb. 26). A great many people liked Richard of Bordeaux for its color and pageantry. They should find The O'Flynn even more to their taste. A sword-&-cloaker of the first water, nimbly directed, eminently tuneful, scenically as magnificent as Hollywood's best, The O'Flynn tells a full-blooded tale about the battles between William of Orange and James II in Ireland.

The O'Flynn, ably impersonated by swashbuckling George Houston, does not care particularly which side he fights on so long as he is in the fray. His worldly assets, he believes, are his Castle Famine and a motley handful of loyal bog-trotters. There are tales that the castle is the hiding place of treasure, but he does not take them seriously until a credulous banker offers to lend him money on the security of the unfound trove. Meantime. The O'Flynn has enlisted on the side of William of Orange, only to fall in love with a noblewoman. Lady Benedette Mount-Michael (Lucy Monroe), whose sympathies are with' James. The gallant Irishman thereupon changes sides.

Follows a duel in the best early Fairbanks manner between O'Flynn and his sweetheart's treacherous fiance, the siege of Orange's Castle Knockmore, discovery of the fabled treasure in Castle Famine. Best tunes in the lush musical accompaniment to all these romantic doings: "Child of Erin," "The Throb of My Heart," "Lovely Lady."

Accent On Youth (by Samson Raphaelson; Crosby Gaige, producer) twists the immortal Cyrano theme around the corner to a happy ending. A mature playwright named Gave (Nicholas Hannen, from London) is contemplating a trip to Finland with an amorous actress immediately following the premiere of his new show. This is sorrowful news to his secretary (Constance Cummings, from Hollywood). In time's nick the playwright discovers that he reciprocates his employe's affection. Another complication arises in the person of a young actor who vows love for the secretary. The playwright nobly prepares for the young actor a declaration of love, coaches him in his lines. The youth is not having much success with his pre-fabricated recital when he suddenly decides to toss it overboard, seize the young woman in his arms, state his case another way.

Actor Hannen is such an agreeably wise and merry character that, had the play ended with the marriage of the young couple, some spectators would have gone home feeling depressed. Shrewd Playwright Raphaelson, however, digs clown into his theatrical bag of tricks for a solution satisfactory for all. His play is likely to be the light comedy success of the midseason.

Rain From Heaven (by S. N. Behrman; Theatre Guild, producer) presents a house full of ill-assorted guests who spend a long and embarrassing week-end in controversial conversation. Compassionate Lady Wyngate (Jane Cowl) has invited to meet one another two exiled Russian artists and scholars, a Munich music critic whom Adolf Hitler ran out of Germany for being one-eighth Jewish, a U. S. newspaper publisher who groans about his taxes and woos Fascism, his heroic aviator brother, the publisher's silly wife. Since Rain From Heaven is an "idea play," Mr. Behrman has not been at great pains to provide his drama with much action. What plot there is concerns the silly wife's love for the music critic and Lady Wyngate's transfer of affections from the aviator to the music critic.

Surrounding this pennyweight of plot is a hundredweight of animated literature. Lady Wyngate's guests talk of love & duty; of race prejudice and race persecution; of the imminent downfall of Capitalism and the possibility of an Anglo-American alliance to prevent it. At one point the aviator calls the music critic a Jewish swine, while his publishing brother adds: "You killed Christ and gave birth to Lenin!"

Emerging smokily from these verbal cannonades is the dim theme that humans are unbearably trammeled by the sharp boundaries of prejudice. Says Actress Cowl just before the curtain falls: "We're all locked up behind our little fences."

Piper Paid (by Sarah B. Smith & Viola Brothers Shore; Harold K. Berg & D. W. Lederman, producers). The antithesis of Rain From Heaven (see above), Piper Paid has much plot but few ideas. Its authors begin their intricate tale by arranging a frivolous modiste (Edith Barrett) on the balcony of a Karlsbad hotel with a psychiatrist she is engaged to marry, a mural painter she loves and a novelist she has encouraged by spending one night with him in Paris. As an added embarrassment of dramatic riches, Mesdames Smith & Shore have thrown in the novelist's ever-ailing wife, the modiste's partner (flittery Spring Byington) and a bumbling comic named Basil Gainsborough (Harry Green).

For people who like to see an involved, if improbable, tale cleverly unraveled, Piper Paid should have genuine appeal. A near-suicide, two bogus psychiatric tricks and a great deal of hysterical acting by Edith Barrett wind up an anecdote whose moral seems to be that no matter how much devilment a woman may cause, if she suffers loudly enough she may be judged to have made recompense.

Baby Pompadour (by Benjamin Graham; Arthur Dreifuss & Willard G. Gernhardt, producers). A program note to Baby Pompadour states: "Benjamin Graham, the author of the play, is a well-known figure in the financial world, and identified with the affairs of many impor tant corporations. He is also the senior author of an authoritative work in 'Security Analysis,' a member of the faculty of Columbia University, and active in the sphere of economics. Playwriting is his hobby and Baby Pompadour is his first. . . ."

After seeing Baby Pompadour most critics advised Mr. Graham to get a new hobby.

Fools Rush In (produced by Leonard Sillman). Last spring Mr. Sillman recruited a number of agreeable young folk from Hollywood, Broadway and the radio, presented them in an informal revue called New Faces. Making allowances for the cast's inexperience, critics found it on the whole pleasant entertainment, chiefly commendable for its impudence. Last summer Producer Sillman took his whole troupe to New Rochelle, settled them in a boat tied up in a harbor off Long Island Sound, put on a sequel called Fools Rush In. Last week he brought it to Broadway.

At the first performances of Fools Rush In, many a spectator had an unsettling suspicion that he was going mad. This was due partly to the program, which seldom jibed with what was going on onstage, partly to the material presented. There was a number called "A Chorus Girl in the Country" in which a strange looking baggage came out, flitted stiffly about the stage, went through a pantomime to suggest milking a cow, then flitted ott again. A handsome, Junoesque blonde named Betzi Beaton (Follies) stared wall eyed at the audience, blew a few soap bubbles, huskily mumbled a few incoherences, sidled off into the wings.

In its better moments. Fools Rush In fell back on the satire its predecessor used with such success. There was a political speech by a stripling named O. Z. Whitehead, who was nominating somebody for something in the Tenth Assembly District. Barbara Hutton Mdivani. Doris Duke and Gloria Baker came in for some stern kidding in a ribald song. Imogene Coca made a sprightly and naughty Salvation Army lassie. Meeting at a Girl Scout affair, Mrs. Hoover and Mrs. Roosevelt had some acid things to say to each other :

Mrs. Hoover: I believe Herbert met your husband in Washington, but he didn't quite catch the name.

Mrs. Roosevelt: He never quite caught on to anything, did he, dear?

Portrait of Gilbert (by Carlton Miles; Sam H. Grisman, producer) was some thing of a mystery play. Until a few days before its opening, it could not be ascertained in what theatre Portrait of Gilbert would be staged. Up it finally bobbed at the Longacre, with its tale of the moral issues involved when a lady feels soft hearted toward the family of a man who has kidnapped and killed the husband she did not like very much. Author of Por trait of Gilbert, longtime dramacritic of the Minneapolis Star, proved to be no ex ception to the general rule that play reviewers do not make successful play wrights. After three performances. Por trait of Gilbert bobbed down into oblivion.

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