Screenland (Apr-Sep 1924)

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CIA 1265 Broadway, N.V. $8 Genuine Diamond RING I Marvelous Value Brilliant Blue White, Perfect Cut Diamond Gash or Credit Mounting it) 18-K Solid White Gold, Diamond Bet Id hexagon top. A fiooolar Engagement Ring. Cased n handsome ring box, Delivered on it payment of H.00; then si .on a :eK thereafter. Money Bach If Not Satisfied. THE OLD RELIABLE ORIGINAL CREDIT JEWELERS I DEPT. N26 tc7cU08N. State St., Chicago. III. ' BSe Store* In Leading Cities off stage whenever he gives the signal, he enters a household that is in the throes of despair. By crafty use of his money, he persuades the inmates that they can succeed and be happy if only they put their minds to it. In the last act, true enough, the Pollyanna Peruna has worked. All their ills are cured and they are each as rich and handsome as Charlie Schwab. When the final curtain falls, the beautiful young daughter of the household, who through the heroic Dr. Frank Crane's efforts has become a writer as great as Johnny Farrar, is found gurgling matrimonially in noble Gypsy Jim's arms. In other words, dear reader, reverting to the deplorable George Jean Nathan species of criticism — sentimental wallawalla. Leo Carillo is the star. The Mons. Carillo is the kind of actor who is very fond of the romantic charm of his own eyes. He rakes them, drops them, casts them sidewise, narrows them, blinks them, gazes ardently with them and further employs them as constant substitutes for histrionic ability. Martha Bryan Allen is an attractive heroine. V. i 6 fjpHE Miracle," as directed by ReinJL hardt, designed by Norman-Bel Geddes, and set into motion by Prof. Dr. Morris Gest, is by all odds the most thoroughly beautiful spectacle that the American theatre has known. So much has been written about it already that doubtless the natives of even remote Kansas are by this time as familiar with it as they are with long-sleeve undershirts, embroidered suspenders and the poetry of Edgar A. Guest. All that remains for me to say about it is urge it upon your notice. It is everything that one of the numerous million and a half dollar moving pictures claims to be and isn't. It is stupendous in taste, in splendor, and in its emotional effect. It has converted the Century Theatre, once a dramatic poorhouse, into a cathedral of sweeping dramatic grandeur! To come to New York and not to see ''The Miracle" is to come to New York and miss the greatest new sight that the city has boasted since •'Abie's Irish Rose" was a bud. VI. THE usual play elaborated from a vaudeville sketch consists of an available ten or fifteen minute idea surrounded by two hours of cheap and imitative dramatic writing. The first act is generally patterned after the first act of Smith's "Fortune Hunter"; the last is an imitation of the trick finish of a George Cohan comedy; and all of the second act save that portion of it that is consumed by the original sketch is modeled more or less faithfully after the middle act of Roi Cooper Megrue's "It Pays to Advertise"— whether it fits the idea of the original sketch or not. George Kelly's "The Show-Off" is an elaboration of a vaudeville sketch, so my agents report to me, but what I have observed of the majority of such elaborations does not apply to it. Kelly has carefully elaborated his sketch as a careful writer elaborates a character and a theme, not as a theatrical hack amplifies a character merely by keeping him on the stage two hours instead of twenty minutes and a theme merely by taking two hours to tell it instead of ten minutes. What results is a thoroughly amusing and vital study of a typical young American master of bunk and a comedy which, while decidedly uneven, yet comprises an effective background for that character. It is the character of the young braggart, a thirty-two dollar clerk in the freight department of the Pennsylvania Railroad who passes himself off as an official of the road, that is actually the play, however. There is more real drama in this single character than there is in nine-tenths of the plays along Broadway. It is so completely vivid that it seems almost to dramatize itself. And as it is embodied by a newcomer named Bartels, it becomes one of the most perfectly recognizable portraits in the album of native drama. VII. Zona Gale's attempt at character drawing in "Mister Pitt" is not nearly so successful as Prof. Kelly's. La Gale's efforts in this particular case remind one of the numerous writers of detective stories who followed in the wake of Conan Doyle and his celebrated bloodhound Sherlock. These writers believed that characterization was an absurdly easy business and set about to negotiate it by identifying this one of their sleuth heroes simply as an invariable smoker of purple cigarettes and that one simply as an omniverous reader of cook books. La Gale similarly appears to believe that all that is necessary to the identification of a stage character is to put the hard pedal down on his chief pecularity. As a result, her Mister Pitt has no more shading than the Arizona desert. It is less a character than a single trait of character. And it, together with the play that surrounds it, is accordingly monotonous. Walter Huston is an effective actor, but the role deadens his performance. VIII. The Goose Hangs High," by Lewis Beach, is still another play dealing with the Younger Generation. I am tired of hearing about the Younger Generation. The next time I go to the theatre and a flock of ingenues and juveniles trot on with bobbed hair, white flannels, copies of Freud and tennis racquets, gabble loudly about jazz and cocktails, and sass the older actors who play the roles of their parents, I am going to write a letter of protest to the newspapers. Scott Fitzgerald will surely have a lot to answer for on Judgment Day! CjIeorge Jean Nathan brings the theatre to your door every month in Dramaiand. Watch for his reviews of current stage plays in Screenland for June. Ready May first.