Film and Radio Guide (Oct 1945-Jun 1946)

January, 1 946 Sherwood’s play is about a newspaper editor. Morey Vinson, the editor, is a liberal in conflict with the reactionary publisher of the newspaper for which he works. When, after the Nazi invasion, Morey comes out for aid to Russia, there is a showdown between Morey and his boss. Morey quits and joins the Navy. Over-age for combat service, smarting at the idea of being assigned to a desk, he is sent as cook on a destroyer to the Pacific. The destroyer is sunk, but Morey escapes and makes his way to a small island held by American and Filipino guerrillas. He turns down the chance to return home on a submarine, preferring to fight and die with the guerrillas. Spencer Tracy makes a valiant attempt to humanize a part that is essentially a point of view rather than a character. Martha Sleeper, who plays Morey’s wife, walks through the play without once making her presence felt. Clay Clement as the colonel and Laurence Fletcher as the newspaper’s business manager play stock characters effectively for stock characters. Capt. Carson Kanin’s direction is clean cut. The Reader's Theater The newly organized Readers Theater is worthy of your attention. It is the purpose of this new group to present readings of great plays. The opening performance was of Oedipus Rex. And let me tell you that the Frank Sinatra bobby sockers and the cultivated devotees of Euripedes have a great deal in common. You would know what I mean if you saw the mad, wild, hysterical scramble for tickets in the lobby of the Majestic. One woman in what started as a qu^ue lamented in choric fashion : “Ami these people consider themselves FILM AND RADIO GUIDE 41 intellectuals!” The reading itself was unfortunately not equal in zest to the demonstration that heralded it. The technique, part reading, part acting, was hybrid. In a reading the problem of the actor is to create an illusion, an illusion that gains in effectiveness because the emotion and the meaning are unhindered by external factors. But in this case the actors moved around and gestured so that they broke the continuity of words, images and sensation. Tozere, who read Oedipus, was too cold in the early part of the reading. He achieved intensity of emotion only at the end, when he faced the horrible, shattering revelation of how he could not escape his destiny of killing his father and marrying his mother. Blanche Yurka was an impressive but mannered Jocasta. "The Secret Room" Within the last decade Robert Turney wrote a play called Daughters of Atreus, which failed to get critical approval or meet the public taste. And yet it was a play that had poetic insight and considerable dramatic power, so that when a new play by Mr. Turney was announced, I looked forward to it with enthusism. The Secret Room is the new play, and again there are moments of penetration and beauty. But this time the moments are rare. The story is of a woman whose mind has been deranged by imprisonment in Dachau and by compulsory prostitution under the Gestapo. An old physician has brought her to America to be cured by a brilliant young psychiatrist. She comes to live in the ])sychiatrist’s home as a comi)anion to his children. A curious choice for a companion, but at the time the choice is made the psychiatrist does not know the history of the case. Very soon after coming to live with the psychiatrist’s family, this woman commits one murder, attempts another, and disturbs the whole household in every conceivable way. This story of a frenzied, desperate woman could have been a good one, but Mr. Turney muffed his opportunity. His selection of incidents is faulty, and his plot is fraught with inconsistencies of structure and behavior. In addition, the play is interspersed with corny gags. Obviously, what happened is that the esoteric Daughters of Atreus got its author nowhere, and he decided to catch the public taste this time, no matter how. The attempt was clumsy and resulted in a betrayal of Mr. Turney’s better judgment. So inconsistent, so unreal was the play, and incidentally much of the acting as well, that at times the otherwise indifferent audience actually grew contemptuous and burst into unrestrained laughter. It may be just a hunch or cussedness in clinging to an initial impression, but I still feel that Mr. Turney could turn out a viable play if he’d relax and write without an inhibiting selfconsciousness. "Home is the Hunter" The American Negro Theatre has a brief but proud record of play production. Its Anna Lucasta, for instance, was not only successful in Harlem; it has also been playing for a long time to appreciative downtown audiences and a roadshow company has met with great success. Home Is The Hunter, by Samuel M. Kootz, the newest offering of the ANT, however, mai’ks an anti-climax. The new play is Continued on Page 45