Film and Radio Guide (Oct 1945-Jun 1946)

40 FILM AND RADIO GUIDE Volume XII, No. 4 THE PLAY'S THE THING FLORA RHETA SCHREIBER "State of the Union" Howard Lindsay and Paussel Crouse are a play-writing team with which to reckon. Not that they are great writers or profound writers, but because they combine sincerity of conviction with smart showmanship — an admirable mixture. Stripped to its essentials, their State of the JJyiion is just a series of gags, but the gags spring from sound observation of the contemporary scene and at their best rise to fine social satire. Emotionally, however, the play is sterile. There simply are no peaks in the play’s structure. The wit is all on one plane. If you enjoy this kind of thing, you would enjoy it whether you came in during the first act or not until the last act, just as you enjoy a cartoon on page 11 of your favorite magazine whether or not you’ve seen the cartoon on page 4.* The story is about a successful airplane manufacturer, G r a n t klatthews, who is groomed by the politicoes for the Presidency, and about how, resisting their persuasion, he finally gets out of hand and stands up for what he believes. His mistress — also mistress of a large newspaper syndicate— wants him to be president ; his wife wants him to come home and keep his convictions untarnished. This struggle between the wife and the mi.stress "'The episodic type of story-construction is well suited to the needs of the screen. The movie habits of U. S. audiences make it necessary to break stories down, so that people may pick up the story at any point. — EDITOR’S NOTE. Flora Rheta Schreiber is an ironic one, for in the very act of promoting Grant for the presidency, the mistress loses him. If he is to be presidential timber, he must appear to be happily married, the politicoes argue. While the play opens with Grant estranged from his wife, it ends with a reconciliation inadvertently promoted by the mistress. “Politics makes strange bedfellows,’’ a line in the play, is patly apropos. The love story, dealing with the old theme of a wife who makes the decisions for her husband while shrewdly making it seem as if he is making his own decisions, is reminiscent of What Everij Womaa Knows. Ralph Bellamy, with that special combination of urbanity and forthrightness that generally characterizes his acting, is a convincing Grant. Ruth Hussey, as his wife, gives a clearly conceived and brilliantly executed performance. The rest of the company, including Kay Johnson as the calculating publisher mistress, Myron McCormick as a cynical publicity man. Minor Watson as a veteran politician give crisp performances. Bretaigne Windust’s direction is as usual smooth, well-paced, and knowing. "The Rugged Path" It is five years since Robert Sherwood, who has himself figured in the newspaper dispatches of the recent war, has had a new play produced. And it is fifteen years since Spencer Tracy, then appearing in The Last Mile, has acted in a Broadway play. The Playwrights’ Company’s production of Sherwood’s The Rugged Path, with Tracy in the lead, should therefore be something of an event. The truth is, however, that the audience is pretty well let down. Tracy gives an easy and sincere performance, and Sherwood is writing sincerely of a man of good will, whose dream of America can be realized only in the purgatory of World War II. But sincerity in itself is not enough to make a provocative evening in the theater. The play is formless, thin, lacking in verisimilitude and in psychological motivation. At times it has eloquence — an undramatic, static eloquence, but eloquence for all that. At other times it is embarrassingly hackneyed, as in the final scene in which an old Negro attendant in the White House says, “We all got to keep the spirit of our forefathers alive.’’ Like J. M. Patterson’s The Fourth Estate and Elliott Nugent’s A Place Of Our Own, Mr.