New Plays in Manhattan

Sweet Mystery of Life (by Richard Maibaum. Michael Wallach & George Haight; Herman Shumlin, producer). Written with one eye on Broadway's hilarious Three Men on a Horse and the other on Hollywood, this farce exhibits the psychological rejuvenation of a grouchy department store tycoon (Gene Lockhart) who fancies himself ready to die. Three scheming vice presidents plan to insure his life, then talk him into his grave. Hastily summoned is a moony ager.t (Hobart Cavanaugh) of Good Life Insurance Co. who observes that "Life Insurance is Immortality." finds himself the dazed recipient of commissions on a $5,000,000 policy. He makes friends with the insured, teaches him handball and health rules, brings him back from Bermuda bursting with bounce and sparkle. The schemers call in a hussy whose amorous ministrations they hope will hasten their employer's collapse. Thence the comedy builds up to an unerring anticlimax. The employer marries the hussy.

Overdone in spots and half-baked in others. Sweet Mystery of Life proves chunky, pug-nosed Gene Lockhart (Ah, Wilderness!) a comedian who can make much out of little. One member of the cast who seems to enjoy himself is bulky Broderick Crawford, son of owl-eyed Comedienne Helen Broderick.

Achilles Had a Heel (by Martin Flavin: Walter Hampden, producer) is a distressing piece of mumbo-jumbo showing Tragedian Hampden as a Negro elephant-keeper in a zoo. Mr. Hampden and the invisible elephant love each other for being big. strong, noble. When a high-yellow wench, urged on by a jealous monkey-keeper, saps Mr. Hampden's integrity, the elephant, outraged, knocks his friend down with a blast of dusty air. The monkey-keeper gets the elephant job. makes a mistake, is promptly killed.

Mr. Hampden does his level best with this nonsense, fails to dispel an impression that he appears in it because he lost a sporting election bet.

Jubilee (words & music by Moss Hart & Cole Porter; Sam Harris & Max Gordon, producers) was facetiously described by its creators during rehearsals as a cross between The Merry Widow and As Thousands Cheer. In common with the former, it is laid in a fabulous kingdom found only in operetta. But in comparison with the latter, about the best that can be said is that the same man wrote both books. Jubilee chiefly satisfies the eye. In design and color, the costumery by Irene Sharaff & Connie Depinna probably surpasses anything so far seen on Broadway. But when Jubilee tries to please the ear, and especially when it tries to tickle the funnybone, it is less successful.

In the kingdom of Hart & Porter, the King (Melville Cooper) yearns not for feats of statecraft but to be able to perform tricks of magic. The Queen (Mary Boland) yearns for the handsome biceps of Charles Rausmiller, the cinema's Mowgli. The Prince and Princess yearn respectively for a night-club dancer and an itinerant playwright. On the eve of the King's jubilee, the pressure of boredom sends them all off to satisfy their various yearnings.

During the course of the royal family's fantastic but not very funny incognitos, Actress Boland gets a chance to re-enact her characteristic role of a matronly nibbertigibbet, gaily crying t;God save the Queen!" when she departs for her first date with Mowgli. The King falls in with a professional hostess patterned after Elsa Maxwell, who promotes him as a society prestidigitator. The Princess gets her man and the Prince gets the dancer (June Knight). Spectators seeking regulation musicomedy fun will find it in Jubilee principally when Actress Knight, fresh from Hollywood, is onstage. She does a sinuous dance called the Beguine and, dressed in about the same amount of clothing that serves a gun crew on a battleship, sings part of a song titled A Picture of Me Without You, which should replace Composer Porter's You're the Top h the hearts of parodists.

Picture Henry Ford without a car.

Picture Heaven's firmament without a star.

Picture Fritzy Kreisler without a fiddle.

Picture poor Philadelphia without a Biddle.

Picture Central Park without a sailor.

Picture Mr. Lord minus Mr. Taylor.

Add them all together and what have you got?

Just a picture of me without you.

Moss Hart & Cole Porter set out last January to go around the world while writing their show. Returning for rehearsals in August, it was rumored they had been anxiously approached by the British Embassy, which had heard that Jubilee was to satirize the celebration of George V's 25-year reign. Librettist Hart proclaimed: "There'll be no war if I can help it." In the interest of international harmony, he took the beard off his king, revised the makeup which had caused Mary Boland to look astonishingly like Mary Windsor.

One of the most successful and most nervous men in the U. S. Theatre, Moss Hart went into a dither while seeing As Thousands Cheer and Merrily We Roll Along through rehearsals. Slumped gloomily in his seat in the empty auditorium while Jubilee was being whipped into shape in Boston (see cut). Moss Hart fretted, chewed gum incessantly, lost 20 lb.

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