New Plays in Manhattan

The Old Maid (by Zoe Akins; Harry Moses, producer). Memorable heroines in U. S. fiction are in the minority. But on the theory that women are the theatre's best customers, the U. S. stage has for years been the haven of commercially successful female characterizations. Some of the most successful of these have been the creation of Zoe Akins (Declassee, The Greeks Had a Word for It). Currently she has borrowed a pair of early 19th Century New Yorkers from Edith Wharton's novel. The Old Maid, brought them together with a resounding impact.

Charlotte (Helen Menken) and Delia Lovell (Judith Anderson) are cousins whose bodices and bustles are right out of Godey's Lady's Book. But beneath their modish taffetas each is dressed in an emotional hair shirt. Both Helen Menken, whose make-up has become more & more white and tragic since her girlish theatrical holiday in Seventh Heaven 13 years ago, and Judith Anderson, a sultry lady with an odd smirk at the corners of her mouth, are past mistresses at handling a heavily dramatic situation. They are both quite at home in The Old Maid, for that opus narrows down into a cat-&-cat fight between the cousins over a daughter whom Charlotte in an unguarded moment had by an artist whom Delia loved but did not wait to marry.

Director Guthrie McClintic deserves high praise for the splendid culminating scene between the cousins. The daughter, who believes her mother is merely an old maiden cousin and whose real attachment is to Delia, is about to marry. For the first time in the long jealous warfare between them. Delia relents, makes the daughter promise to save her last farewell kiss, before she goes on her honeymoon, for Charlotte.

A Lady Detained (by Samuel Shipman & John B. Hymer; S. L. Latham, producer) offers Song-&-Danceman Oscar Shaw (Very Good Eddie, Flying High) in his first legitimate appearance, in which he is called upon to impersonate the leader of an impoverished gang of ex-bootleggers. An air-minded heiress (handsome Claudia Morgan) drops out of a fog into the mob's rural retreat. The lady is detained for ransom, and, as Playwrights Shipman & Hymer have one of their hoodlums say, she might easily have fallen into the hands of less humane snatchers who would have kept her in a cellar "and given her nothing but musty bread and dank water." Another positive advantage for a girl snatched by this gang is its personable chief. It is not much of a surprise, therefore, when he and the lady fall in love. Actor Shaw, perhaps rightly, performs his part as if he expects the end of each line to be followed by a song cue.

Living Dangerously (by Reginald Simpson & Frank Gregory; Shuberts, producers). In this British importation, a London physician named Norton (Conway Tearle) breaks off his partnership with unscrupulous Dr. Pryor (Percy Waram) because the latter has been selling narcotics. Thereupon Dr. Pryor runs to the Medical Council with the tale that Dr. Norton has been unprofessionally intimate with his wife (Phoebe Foster). Since Dr. Norton loses his right to practice, Mrs. Pryor is disgraced and her husband subsequently sent to jail, the chief characters of this piece appear to be living not dangerously but miserably.

A one-act melodrama tacked on the end of Living Dangerously, in which the two principal male actors juggle guns, gives a poor play a poor name.

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