New Play in Manhattan

Watch on the Rhine (produced by Herman Shumlin). Lillian Hellman, No. 1 U.S. woman playwright (The Children's Hour, The Little Foxes), has written an uneven play concerning Naziism, but it is by far the best on the subject to date. There is not a single Nazi in it. It tells of the daughter of a dead American diplomat (Mady Christians), who returns from Europe to her luxurious, flower-filled old home outside Washington, D.C., bringing with her the German engineer (Paul Lukas) she married 20 years before and their three children. Since 1933 her husband has been an underground fighter against Hitler and he is about to sneak back into Germany with funds for the movement. But his secret is discovered by another Washington house guest, a decadent Rumanian (George Coulouris), who tries to blackmail the German by threats of informing the Nazi embassy. The German finally kills the blackmailer, says farewell to his wife and children, and leaves on his frightening mission.

For two acts the play is mostly talk--of the supercharged, characterful kind that Playwright Hellman writes. But even intense garrulity does not make the play move. Then in the last act the stage takes fire with the struggle between the German and Rumanian, with Paul Lukas' remarkable portrayal of the German sadly, sensitively explaining why he has been willing to commit murder, why he is determined to martyr himself, if need be, for the anti-Nazi cause. In this scene Lukas certainly gives one of the great performances of recent years. Veteran Actress Lucile Watson is excellent as Lukas' American mother-in-law, whose head has been spinning around in diplomatic circles for years, but who finally understands that, for the German, politics is deadly serious business.

The play will undoubtedly please many people just because it is anti-Nazi, but dramatically speaking, its merit is that, for one act at least, it is a superbly written and acted picture of a dedicated man.

Tall, brown-haired, courtly Paul Lukas, son of a Hungarian advertising man, was born in 1895 on a train just pulling into Budapest. He went to the Actors' Academy (Hungarian national theatrical school), served with the Hungarian forces during World War I, made his professional stage debut in Budapest in 1916 as Liliom. Later he was a guest artist under Max Reinhardt in Berlin and Vienna, acted in German UFA films. Paramount's Adolf Zukor saw him on the Budapest stage, got Lukas to move to Hollywood. Since then he has appeared in The Night Watch, Strictly Dishonorable, Little Women, Confessions of a Nazi Spy, The Lady Vanishes. He first played on Broadway in 1937 in A Doll's House. He is married to a small, blonde Hungarian, Gizella Benes. He likes to drive and tinker with fast automobiles, flies his own plane. Often he uses his acting talent for practical jokes, such as ordering people out of his house for supposed insults to his wife. Sometimes it works.

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