Old Play in Manhattan

They Knew What They Wanted (by Sidney Howard; produced by Leonard Sillman) is the Pulitzer Prize play that made the late Sidney Howard famous. After 15 years it seems (like rooms and houses not seen since childhood) much smaller than memory suggested. It still has fresh and human qualities and a wise moral, but clearly it was the brilliant acting of Pauline Lord, Richard Bennett and Glenn Anders that gave it its original gloss.

Down-to-earth is Playwright Howard's tale of an elderly Italian winegrower in the Napa Valley who courts a San Francisco waitress by mail, palming off his handsome young foreman's photograph as his own; of the girl's disillusionment on seeing him, her going through with the marriage, her transgression with the foreman. It is a triangle story solved by arithmetic, not geometry. The girl most wants a home, the old man a wife, the young man his freedom. So Playwright Howard, without cynicism, urges his bewildered people to be sensible, and quietly laughs melodrama and heroics off the stage.

Despite its genuine humanity, its touches of humor and moments of drama, They Knew What They Wanted is sometimes awkward, fumbling, slow-moving; and the present production brings out the worst in it. Where the original company gave it the lift that a fine orchestra can give to a fairly good piece of music, the present company gives it the drubbing of a high-school band. Pathetic gags meant to reveal the simple natures of the characters are played for comedy lines. June Walker is a likable if unimpressive heroine, but Giuseppe Sterni's only virtue is his authentic Italian accent, and the Napa Valley is not the part of California where Cinemactor Douglass Montgomery is most at home.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.