Critics' Choice

The New York Drama Critics' Circle, polling its annual vote for the season's best American play, last week got into its usual politico-dramatic wrangle. On the first ballot nine votes (a three-quarters plurality, or 15 votes, was needed to win) went to Lillian Hellman's passionate, anti-Nazi Watch on the Rhine (TIME, April 14). Next came three votes for William Saroyan's dreamy The Beautiful People (see below), which had opened the night before.

Six ballots and three hours of electioneering produced no decision, but the Saroyan bloc grew stronger. Then the Circle decided that a simple majority should win. On the seventh ballot Watch on the Rhine triumphed with twelve votes, Saroyan got six, Critic Burns Mantle (New York Daily News') held out with one ballot for Paul Green & Richard Wright's Negro tragedy, Native Son. The Circle had no trouble producing 16 votes (three not voting) for Emlyn Williams' The Corn Is Green as the season's best foreign play.

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