Screenland (May-Oct 1931)

64 SCREEN LAND ^TAGE in ^VIEW The summer show season is in full swing on Broadway. Read these pungent comments on the most interesting new plays Th "Peter Ibbetson" By I IKE an old love-rose inhaled again in dreams, like a bundle of J perfumed love-letters that tumbles out of a drawer unexpectedly, like some exquisite firstlove emotion re-evoked over a bottle of old wine in a somnolent inn — so was I enswaddled again in that magic that the story of "Peter Ibbetson'* has always re-evoked in me at the beautiful revival of this play by ShubertRaphael and Constance Collier. (Nearly all the wisecracking and sophistication of the present day is fake.) Dennis King was an almost ethereal-looking Peter, something indeed for romantic maidens (Oh, there are a few of 'em left!) to swoon over. Jessie Royce Landis as Mary, the Duchess of Towers was compelling, especially in the dream-scenes. The Colonel Ibbetson of Charles Coburn was so rascally — from any standpoint — that I wanted to howl "Bravo!" when Peter killed him. However, the finest bit of acting was done by W'allis Clark as Major Duquesnois — and what a tremendously spontaneous hand he got ! The Younger Generation will have no use for this play. That's because they are dead and buried emotionally— but do not know it yet. "The Wiser They Are" Ruth Gordon and Osgood Perkins romp through "The Wiser They Are," by Sheridan Gibney, like two kids, although Osgood is a bit too severe looking and o'ergrown to be an ideal lover. Ruth is Trixie Ingram, a girl who doesn't know her own It, rather flirtatious and dancingly funny wherever she is allowed to be just Ruth Gordon. Perkins is her guardian who is set on marrying her, although he is deep in many unsevered and half -severed affairs. And Trixie is, of course, Benjamin De Casseres Jack De Leon and Jack Celestin, with the aid of Lionel Atwill, Kay Strozzi, Fortunio Bonanova and Marry Gribble, have put over a corking good mystery show in "The Silent Witness." The same lady of uneasy virtue (played by Kay Strozzi) is murdered twice before our very eyes by the use of picture technique. The second time it was the real stuff. The first time a Nize Boy from Such a Xize Family thought he had done it. His father goes to trial for the boy (some cleverly worked-out incidents point to the Head of the Nize Family), and he has even confessed in a remarkably good court-room scene, when a stranger (to the audience) rushes in to tell the court that Carlo Forli (Fortunio Bonanova), a gigreally strangled the Abandoned Woman. The stranger was hiding behind a curtain, as we see in another flashback. Clever! Lionel Atwill as the father is at his best. Young Anthony Kemble-Cooper as the Blond Kid in the Toils of Sin did a rattling fine job, while Harold De Becker as a cockney witness came near walking off with the act. He sent us into convulsions. No doubt about this as a slam-bang sell-out as a picture. "Getting Married" In spite of the fact that the Theatre Guild dredged the whole town for about eight of the best players known hereabouts, it could not infuse any life into George Bernard Shaw's "Getting Married," which is Shaw at his very worst. In this word-scenario in two acts (for "Getting Married" is all titles and no picture) a lot of miscellaneous people sit around and emit a lot of ancient wheezes and bromides about marriage. The sex-meouwings of these two persons, with the antics of six others of various sexes as foils, provide a great deal of smart entertainment for two acts. The third act, on board the steamer Olympic, goes clean boom. A sheer collapse of inventiveness and exhausted dialogue. Result : bedroom horse Ruth Gordon romps through "The Wiser They Are," a new play which provides a great deal of smart entertainment. play, vintage of 1898. Ho-hum ! Julia Hoyt was there. It was a Jed Harris production. And that explains its success. "The Silent Witness" There is no play at all. The "characters" are epigram-spouting dummies, and what little champagne there is in the con