Screenland (May-Oct 1930)

110 SCREENLAND you gave in 'Mary Dugan' was one of the finest I have ever seen on any stage or any screen." By the way, this picture used to be called "Jailbreak" and the new title is from the fertile brain of the director. Mervyn is very careful about dialogue, too. "You have to watch dialogue like a hawk," he said. "A perfectly commonplace sentence will seem unbelievably funny when spoken on the stage or screen. Bernice had a line that would have brought down the house had I not changed it. A laugh at that dramatic point in the picture would have ruined the whole scene." When you see "Numbered Men" look for the doughnut scene. Those doughnuts were real, and great was the joy of the staff when scenes had to be taken over three or four times and more and more doughnuts were forthcoming. Everyone on the set was getting a break but the men in the world above the scenes. It is called the flies in the theater; I've just forgotten the studio term for it. The men up there looked hungrily on until they couldn't stand it any longer. Bernice Claire began to rub her eyes thinking she must be dreaming when she saw a nice brown doughnut rise from the plate on the stove toward the ceiling. "I knew they were good, but not that good," she told us afterwards. But there was nothing supernatural about the phenomenon, just that an electrician had let down a string and a real pal had tied a doughnut on the end of it. The Stage in Review — Continued from page 97 toe to toupee and that the swellest sophisticate and the omnipotent Olympian of them all, George Jean Nathan, had fairly cracked his belly over "June Moon," by Ring Lardner and George S. Kaufman, I naturally expected to do the same, for I am hard-boiled, a sophisticate and something of an Olympian. But I didn't. I was amused at his somewhat caustic satire on Tin-Pan Alley, its thrust at Gershwin, its slick unpeeling of the hokum, the illiteracy and moronity of these purveyors of the most sickening rubbish that ever got the name of 'music' and 'song' tagged on to it — but I did not get that laugh-bawling evening that I had hoped for. Probably because I am an idealist. Mr. Lardner's characterizations however, are fine. These men and women of Hokum Avenue really live and talk and act naturally. The story is negligible. If I could remember what it is about, I'd have my head examined. It's a clean, honest show, too, Linda Watkins, Harry Rosenthal, Norman Foster and a perfect supporting cast aiding the chuckles and light hilarity. "Josef Suss" This is a glamourous, all-scenic, melodramatic vision of Lion Feuchtwanger's "Power," a book which I have not read. The story concerns the rise of a Jew named Joseph Suss at the court of Karl Alexander back in the minuetting, pirouetting eighteenth century. The drama pivots on the fact that while race-venemous Suss to gain the highest peak of power at Karl's court has even become a procurer for his boss, the latter has, through the connivance of the father of the girl he has procured for Karl, tried to seduce Suss' own beloved daughter, who commits suicide rather than submit. Suss in revenge encompasses the downfall of the Duke and his own death. Maurice Moscovitch as Suss is a newcomer to the American stage. He is an impressive, eloquent actor of the old school, but lacks subtlety and doesn't dig under. He reached the tragic grand manner in his scene over the body of his daughter, and throughout the play enacted with dignity and cold-blooded assurance the role of an aristocratic Shyloc\. "Joseph Suss" is, however, just "The Merchant of Venice" and "The Fool's Revenge" done over again. Ashley Dukes did the stage version and a good company surrounds Mr. Moscovitch. There's a big costume picture in it, however. "Many A Slip" This comedy gave me many laughs and quite a few smiles. Of course, it will remind you of "It's a Wise Child," at the Belasco, which, as you know, is built around the new comedy theme called 'Ha! Ha! — I'm about to become a mother!' Nothing so indicates the way we have 'advanced' since the war than the way we kid the work of begetting kids. "Many a Slip," by Edith Fitzgerald and Robert Riskin, is not only just comic; it hits a really pathetic note in the attitude of the Young Feller when he finds he has been tricked into marriage in the belief that there is a baby on the way. He was a ninny-idealist and didn't believe in marriage. But when he Hears the News he develops over-night a regular paternal instinct, buys toys, gets married, and all the rest — only to find he has been bilked in the manner that thousands of the Daughters of Eve used to put it over on the Midnight Sons. But in order to end this little play nicely, a baby does get on the way, thanks to the authors and the demands of the box office. Sylvia Sidney is the fair snarer, with Dorothy Sands and Maude Eburne as a servant doing splendid work. The sap was Douglas Montgomery. "The Boundary Line" "The Boundary Line," by Dana Burnet, featuring Otto Kruger, Winifred Lenihan and Katherine Alexander, contains some of that substance as rare in the theater as radium is in the world of matter: Beauty. As a play it is distinctly out of Ibsen; therefore old-fashioned (while Ibsen is not). For imitation is the sincerest form of failure. "The Boundary Line" tells the story of a high-brow bohemian writer married to a commonplace, cash-down wife and his sliding degradation till he reaches riches and the sinks of worldly success in two bathrooms. He can no longer stand the stench of respectability and babbittry that emanates from this town up-State and so leaves his tea-daffy wife to her canned-brain lover and takes a shirt and a toothbrush and follows some nuts from Hollywood who are going west on the Open Road. It's all meant to be symbolical, and the moral is — it's better to be free in Hell than a slave in Heaven (curtain). Somehow, the whole thing didn't jell with me, although I'm all for rebellion — that is, I was before I got bald-headed. It's Mr. Burnet's fault. With all his ingenuity, he can't do a Pop Ibsen. There was only one. "Out Of A Blue Sky" What came out of Leslie Howard "Out of a Blue Sky" (adapted from a German imitation of Pirandello's "Six Characters in Search of an Author," "Pagliacci," "The Spider," etc.) was plainly Reginald Owen's funny portrayal of an actor drafted from the audience to play a stage husband to a company also suddenly drafted from the audience because there was a misunderstanding about the production of "Camille" that night. It all sounded and looked phony to me from the minute the curtain rose on an unset stage with the stage hands playing poker and the stage manager running around mad. For two acts a triangle play is played within a play, for, in the audience were a husband, his wife and the lover, and while the husband believes he is only acting, the wife and lover are pulling off the real thing. Well, as Mons. Ripley says, 'Believe it or not.' The whole business was, to me, inane, although Katherine Wilson is a stunning looker. "It's A Grand Life" They threw a lot of dice and decided that Mrs. Fiske should be the star in "It's a Grand Life," by Hatcher Hughes and Alan Williams. She plays an elderly wife who has got on her hands some hell of a family: a libido-crazy husband, a daughter that my grandma used to call 'abandoned' and a son whose highest flight is a dancer. Enter our only living ex-Tess! I do not know what kind of a picture this thing will make, but it's certainly a roisterous, skylarking bit of up-to-date sexscrapery and sophisticated blow-outs. But Mrs. Fiske is the show. She's gayer, snappier, quicker, more chablis mousseux than ever. The way she receives the reporters! — but you must really see her, for, you know, the play is no longer the thing. Who's in it is the only thing of importance. All fine drama and comedy have almost disappeared from Broadway. "Everything's Jake" Don Marquis has a line of satire that is absolutely his own. This curious Marquisian line comes out again in his latest comedy, "Everything's Jake," which is in a prologue and three acts. Once more we meet the Old Soak, Al and a new alcoholic cheer-leader in ]a\e Smith, who is a rich Long Island bootlegger. ]a\e takes his family and his cronies, Clem and A!, to Paris with him, and here we have some hilarious booze-jinks at the tables in the Boulevard. A long list of first-rate players center around Charles Kennedy as the Old Soa\ and Thurston Hall as ]a\e and Edward Donnelly as AI. A woman tries to vamp ]a\e in Paris — here's where the drama slips in. It all ends as merrily as you could expect. Don Marquis has already put over his "The Old Soak" and "The Cruise of the Jasper B." in pictures. "Everything's Jake" would make a good third as a laughie.