Variety (Jan 1948)

Wednesday, January 7, 1943 Fwty^stieotid PSsRS^ ^Bntrerwny UEISIllllfA'fB 23« A DECADE OF PLAYS AND PLAY-ACTING 19S746 Period Revealed No Sophocles or Bard in the American ;^^^^;:-;ll^!atre : /Chicago. No Sophocles, ao Shakespeare emerged to make the native American drama miomentous during the decade surveyed In itoe flritftnnlca'i to«r*wJume "Ten Eventful Years" (1937- 46)V True, Eugene O'NelU toroke his 12-year silence in 1946 ■wittj a lengthy, eloquent and often exciting examination of the dreams and illusions of barroom rife-rafi which was strangely entitled "The Icfeman Cometh"; there was poetry toy stealth in the often lyrical realism of Tennessee Williams' "The Glass Menagerie" (1945), and in 1943 "Oltlahoma," the (oik comedy with music by Hiehard Rodgers and a libretto ' adapted from Lynn Biggs' "<Sreen Grow the Iiilaes" by Oscar tommersteta H, set new pace and pattern for the music show with antiphonW lwBets. Vet had "William Gillette lived an- other 10 years, that distinguished playwright arid actor could have Uttered again the humorously truthful words he wrote shortly before his death in 1937:-"I have the honor to report tliat the American theatre is still declining." The. financial depression was Still felt when this period be- gan. Hundreds of imeftaployed actors were given at least a subsistence wage in the Federal Theatre Project controlled by the Work Projects Administration. There may have been more heart than art in this worthy governmental experiment, greater relief for the player than for the playgoer, but when in 1939 the Federal Theatre expired iri its fourth yeai:, Ibere' remained encouratgement fOT a non-coihmercia) enterprise entitled the American National 1%eatre and Academy, with a Federal charter. / The theatres of the U.S. experienced an abrupt boom di- rectly World War II had started, even before Americans had been called to arms. This boom grew despite not only a short- age of theatres (they had been snapped up for picture houses during the depression), but a shortage of playwrights and players who 'had transferred their talents to Hollywood, many later engaging in war work at home and abroad. Count- less inferior plays were produced tout without retarding the public's reawakening to" the pleasures of beholding living actors rather than their animated photographs. Some of the nightly plays were almost as contemporary and short-lived as the daily newspapers. Money was spent on production and at the boxoflice as never before. The more successful N.Y. productions lasted SQ many seasons that duplicate casts Were engaged'.for Chicago and the road. But failures still numbered four against one success, and in the absence of tempting scripts many revivals were staged, not only of yesterday's popular pieces, but of day-before-yesterday's: Shakespeare was again the first playwright. Many an unstageworthy comedy or drama died obscurely In what VARnsfnr, the.nation's leading amusement weekly, lernjed strawhat production at the summer theatres that . iJiUShroomed throughout the countuyside and the suburbs of the eastern states, ttie audiences preferring revivals of firoad- Way and national hits. In the raetrogplitan theatres were *taged a few plays with no scenery and few props. Orson Welles made a soeneryless prpsentation of "Julius Caesar" without togas; Thornton Wilder's principal properties for the bare-staging of his "Our Town" (an amiable reflex from the bitter elegy of Bdgat 1*6 Masters' "Spoon River Anthology"), were an array of umbrellas opened against the rainless rain of the burial scene which would have brought down the final curtain had a curtain bee n in use. I Movie Money [ Movie money moved in and out of the living theatre. It had moved in again in 1946. Hollywood writers tackled the Btiffer obstacles lying behind the footlighted proscenium, and a mournful statistician counted in one year 39 failures in 40 attempts. The "color question" was presented with heated partisanship by some of the playwrights, and these checker- 'board dramas increased the attendance of Negro playgoers, as did Shakespearean revivals, which included Paul Robe- son's appearance as Othello and Canada Lee's as Caliban, not to overlook Kthel Waters' emergence as a dramatic ac- tress in "Mamba's Daughters." There were a number of Negro casts ranging from Orson WeUes' Haitian version of "Mac- beth" to "Arutti Lucasta," Philip Yordan's workmanlike play, originally written with Polish-American characters before the script fell into the capable hands of New York's Ameri- can Negro Theatre and was profitably snapped up by com- mercial management (John Wildberg). Plays in protest against, anti-Semitism appeared near the end of-the decade, but none was written with the avowed impartiaUty of Gals> worthy's remembered "Loyalties"; they were more }ust^ indignant than dramatically significant. With the appearance of the amazingly popular ''Junior Miss," theirs came at least a dozen comedies of adolescence that prematurely aged those veteran critics who had not found relief in war work or foreign correspondence, but which greatly pleased not only youngsters temporari^ weaned from the movies tout a va$t number of adults who seemed happy to find their second childhood in what several of the more morose reviewers dubbed "diaper drama." Politics took to the stage in jest and in earnest, and the peani of political persiflage was George M. Cohan's (he died m 1942) song-and-dance impersonation of the living Presi- . dent Franklin D. Roosevelt in "I'd Bather Be Right/' In 1937. A more serious and yet richly amusing consideratioh of the political scene was 1945's "State of the Union," in which Howard Lindsay and Russel Grouse, authors of the durably laughable "Life With Father," satirized not only the conflict ■ between political idealism and bossism but admonitory preachments written along that line. One of the more seri- ous admonitory dramas was noveUst Sihclair Lewis' warn- ing against fascism in America, bearing the ironic title "It Can't Happen Here" and produced in 1936 throughout the, country by 18 units of the Federal Theatre Project. ^ Most of the war plays were precipitously propagandlc^ and it was reeaUcd that America's "What Price Glory" came six years after World War I, and England's "Journey's End". 10 years. Black was very black and white very white, and there Was hardly any gray in these abrupt and one-sided dramatic editorials. Robert E. Sherwood's fluent "There Shall Be No Night" lost nothing of its popular appeal even when a dis- turbance in contemporary history made tactful the change of scene from Finland to Greece. But the war plays of any quality were the lightheartedly messageless rather than the heavily-loaded propagandist, and among these were Paul Qsborn's dramatization of the John Hersiey novel, "A Bell By ASHTON STEVENS (Dean o/ iltnerican Drama Critics) "A Decade oi Ploifs ond Plajz-Actina" is a CmA^rm.- tion from. "Ten Svent^ful YeorV* CoptfriffH JSnct/cIopedia for Adano," John Patrick's "The Hasty Heart," S. N. Behr- man's adaptation of Franz Werfel's "Jacobowslty and the Colonel" and a sprightly r«vue .written by young war veter- ans on the matter of reconversion and teUmg^r called "Wl Me Mister." ■ While many of the better American playwrights served their country or Hollywood, there was always Shakealpeare. As in previous periods, productions of his plays outnumbered those of any other author dead or alive. There were Shake- spearean revivals lavish and spare. The night following Orson Welles' presentation of "Julius Caesar" in mufti, Tallu- lah Bankhead appeared at a nearby N. Y., theatre in the cost- liest ''Antony and Qec^iatra*' ever staged. It lasted Ave iiights, ■ But a brief run did hot always mean a bad performance. One of the best was Welles' telescoping of the Henry his- tories under the title of "Five Kings," in which his wioe- stained and greasily gutteral wencher was reckoned the ripest and most richly humorous Falstaff of the 20th century by critics fortunate enough to witness the too few performances played only in Washington, D. C. The Falstaff of Ralph Rich- ardson was widely acclaimed when Richard Aldrich, husband of Gertrude Lawrence, brought from London to New York, under guarantee, the Old Vic company for a repertory season of six weeks, Here Laiwence Olivier—whose Romeo, like Vivien Leigh's Juliet, had met emphatic failui-e first in Chi- cago and then in New York several seasons earlier—^was welcomed as the right man for Hotspur in the opening half of "Henry IV" and declared by many reviewers to have at- tained to little short of greatness when he assumed the name- part in the rarely seen translation of Sophocles' "Oedipus," originally made by W. B. Yeats for DubUn's Abbey theatre. I EvanB and the Bard ' | Domestic and imported actors measured their skills in "Hamlet," Maurice Evans well-played the first unabridged "Hamlet" since, following the turn of the century, Ben Greet had survived a "Hamlet" without cuts in the University of California's vast open-air Greek theatre at Berkeley. Near the close of the decade, Evans staged for the armed forces at home and abroad a severely shoi'tened "Hamlet" in cos- tumes of the' 19ili centuxy (including swords), which v/as somewhat expanded later when Michael Todd took it over< as a commercial enterprise'. I,ie$lie Howard's "Hamlet" Was more reflective than Urgent; John Glel'gud's was declaimed in the old tradition that had been followed by Edwin Booth's contemporaries, but not by Booth. Evans was the most tireless of the Shakespeareans. In and as, "Richard 11" he gave his most rounded and mag- netic performance. In "Macbeth" his Thane was dimmed by the luminous power of Judith Anderson's Lady Macbeth. His deliberately coclcneyed Malvolio to Helen Hayes' ar- dent Viola in the Guild's "Twelfth Night" was good fun, good theatre; good acting. But his Falstafit in ''Henry IV," part one, was mediocre. The versatile Miss Hayes had her first experience in Shakespeare in Chicago when she re- lieved the hard routine of "Victoria Regina" with special performances of "The Merchant of Venice." Notwithstand- mg uncouth criticism that called her characterization "a half-pontia," the true comic spirit gleamed throughout the diminutive actress' portrayal. Walter Huston, a stalwart among American character actors but unscboole«l. In verse drama, gave up Othello after 21 Broadway performances. Paul Robeson's attaclc on this role, whicli he had first acted in London a decade earlier, was more popular in New York than in other large cities. His characterlzsition was singularly lacking in passion; here the critical posies were bestowed on the lago of Jose Ferrer. The road witnessed its liveliest Shakespeare when Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, with an excellent company and a most artistic yet inexpensive production, left New York and toured from coast to coast hi a riotously comical per- formance of "The Taming nf the Shrew." Anofhei: "grand tour" was made in the earliest of these days by Katharine Cornell when she duplicated throughout the country the N.Y. success of her "Romeo and Juliet," the poetic sppU of her Juliet intensified by the highly emotional Romeo of Maurice Evans and the dazzlingly briUiant Mercutio of Ralph Richardson. Two- comparatively imfamiliar revivals were "The Tempest" and "The Winter's Tale." In the former, the versatile Negro actor, Canada Lee, put forth a Caliban whose speeches were more believable than his makeup, and in which the comedy dancer, Zorina, as Ariel, was more poetic to the eye than to the ear. The Theatre Guild's "Tale" was magnifi- cent scenically, but, even with siuch veterans as Jessie Royce Landis and Florence Reed the acting did not overcome the play's traditional lethargy. And late in 1946 the newly organ- ized American Repertory Company started in Princeton, N.J., a well-received "Henry VIH" with interpolations credited by Director iMargaret Webster to the Holinshed chronicles. Early in this decade a few plays of the Elizabethan and Restoration periods were revived. Welles acted the titular character in Christopher Marlowe's "Doctor Faustus" for N.Y.'s Federal Theatre.-'seats selling for as little as 25c. and no higher than 50c. His and John Houseman's short-lived Mercm-y theatre made a rollicking production of "Thomas Dekker's "The Shoemaker's Holiday." Ruth Gordon, who had prepared for the job by worldng with the Old Vic actors in London, was, as Mrs. Pinchwife, the high cohdiment in Gil- bert Miller's staging of Wycheriy's "The Country Wife." Hie scarcity and mediocrity o£ new scripts encouraged ihe re- vival of successful plays of previous periods. Ibsen's "Hedda Gabler," "Ghosts" and "An Enemy of the People" swiftly appeared and disappeared. But where Alia Nazimova, Wal- ter Hampden and others failed to repopularize Ibsen, the saline Ruth Gordon's 1937 reconsideration of his new woman gave new life to the great Norwegian's ''A Doll's House." 'Anton Chekhov's work was enthusiastically revived with compelling casts. The Lunts, following a Russian pilgrimage to the Moscow Art Theatre, valiantly forsook comedy for a solemn and successful disinterment of "The Sea Gull." Miss Cornell, sharing honours with Miss Anderson and Miss Gor- don in the title parts and supported by a company of un- challengeable calibre directed by Guthrie McClintic, gave "The Three Sisters" the most satisfying examination it had received since Morris. Gest imported the original Moscow cast. Eva LeGallienne and Joseph Schildkraut had a lop- sided revival of "The Chewjr Ckchard," owinjg to imeven Eugene O'Neffl's Broken Silence, Wilh 'Icenian,'a Highlight of the Period s acting by their support and bits of avowedly comical stage business that provoked in the audience mora embarrassiaent than mirth. Miss Cornell, whose "Candida" in Bernard Shaw's comedy of that name was first essayed in 1924, and repeated In 1937, became its classic Interpreter when, in 1942, she revived the play in Niev? York for the Army Emergency Fund and Navy Relief Society with a notable cast. Miss Cornell oiBtered still another "Candida" revival in 1946 (her gallant experiment with Lewis Galantiere's adaptation of "Antigone" failing to attract large audiences), in which Sir Cedric Hardwieke acted an elaborately low-comical Burgess. In 1941 she pre- sented "The Doctor's Dilemma" for 121 performances in N. Y., a duration record for a Shaw revival that was broken only when Gertriide Lawrence restored "Pygmalioii" to the American theatre in 1946. Oscar Wilde's ''The Importance of Being Earnest" was seen agate ill 1989, and in 1946 his "Lady Windermere's Fan" was sumptuously staged (there was even an original score of incidental music) for national consumption in San Francisco. In 1937 Dublin's still-intact Abbey Theatre company toured the U. S. in a familiar repertory. Somerset Maugham's "The Circle" was revived tbeiollowing year with Tallulah Bank- head and Gi:ace Gteorge. Sean O'Casey's "Juno and the Pay- cock" ran to much acclaim. In 1942 Paul Muni returned to the role he had originated in Elmer Rice's "Counsellor at Law." After playing Rudolph Besier's "The Barretts of • Wimpole Street" for the U. S. armed forces in Europe in . 1945, Miss Cornell gave the play .back to the civiliafts of N. Y. The following year was marked by revivals on Broad* way of Ben- Hecht and Charles MaCArthur's hilarloway cynical "The 3Front Page," and the Brian Hooker trattslattiin of "Cyrano de Bergerac," acted and produced by Jose . Ferrer. < There were biographical plays in the flesh as well as in the celluloid. During 1936-38 Helen Hayes was still playing extended engagements in the capitals and mighty tours on the road, impersonating England's best-loved queen in Laurence Housman's "Victoria Regina," which marked the summit of her hard-won starship, Five years later she masqueraded as Harriet Beecher Stowe in Florence Byer- son and Colin Clements' "Harriet," which ran 377 petfotni- ances in N. Y. alone and from which ensued several catas^ trophic revivals of Mre. Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin.'* I Moriey'9'Wilde' 1 London's Robert Morley caught the fancy of the more sophisticated playgoers of Manhattan in his reasonable and witty lifelikeness of the poet-playwright in Leslie and Sewell Stokes' "Oscar Wilde," That was in 1938, the year in which Raymond Massey first presented his finely felt and realized; portrait of the martyred president in Robert E. Sherwood's brilliant and authoritative "Abe Lincoln in Illinois." Hopes that this was the biographical play to end all biographical plays were pleasingly discouraged in the following year when George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart lampooned author Alex- ander WooUcott in "The Man Who Came to Dinner." But the most durable of the biographies was dramatized from the autobiographical humoresqiles of Clarence Day by Howard LindsEty and B^Ussel Crouse in 1939 and entitled "Life With Father." The millions collected from the public in the first seven years of this thoroughly delightful comedy,, concurrently acted by three companies, would encounter un* belief even if totalized in a trustworthy work of reference. Sidney Kingsley's "The Patriots," dealing with the animosities of Jefferson _and Hamilton and the godlike patience of Wash- ington in building a young democracy, was a tired piece ^ about tired men and more elegy than drama. Emmett J| Lavwy's "The Magnificent Yankee" cdebrated the domestic B rather than the judicial lite of the great ihihority leader of 9 the Supreme Court, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. The ^ mellow dignity of Louis Calhern added to the stature of that actor and balanced an uneven play into a hit. This period proved again that it is not always possible to measure the true worth of a play by the length of its run, nor by the PuUtzer prizes and the awards made by the N. Y. Drama Critics' Circle, an organization which was formed in 1935 to protest some of the Pulitzer selections and which eventually uttered ihany savage unilateral iarotests ai^inst its own findings. Harry Brown's realistic drama of soldiers in action, "A Sound of Hunting," produced in 1946, died in two weelis on Broadway, yet continued to live in the admir- ing references of the more fastidious lay and professional playgoers. Philip Barry's mystical correction of a mis- guided world, "Here Come the Clowns," endured less than three months on Broadway despite good acting and sym- pathetic durection; and William Saroyan's likeable collection of San Francisco cracki>ots, "The Beautiful People," lasted only two months in N. Y. although a third of the critics voted it the best play of the 1941 season. But in the long run the long runs were in most cases fair appraisals of diversionary, if not dramaturgic value. The "Broadwise" had not forgotten their ivied cliche to the effect that nothing is so dead as a dead play. I ; - ; . P^ath .oC.Gei^^ The untimely death of George Gershwin Itt 1937 may HaVe hastened gener&l lecognStion of the enduring worth of the many compositions h.« had. written in the idiom of ja?i?. Hftt "Porgy and Bess," the libretto based on Du Bose and Dorothy Heyward's Negro folii; play, began to gain acceptance even from musicologists as the master work of its genre. During this period it was several times revived in the capital cities and on tour. Jerome Kern's "Show Boat" was happily re- vived for a long New York run in 1946. The composer died shortly after the first night of this reproduction, survived by at least a dozen songs that had become a melodious part of the musical consciousness of the American people. Victor Herbert's ancient "The Red Mill," verging on 40 years of age, was the surprise success of the Broadway revivals of 1948i One.of its producers was Paula, daughter of Fred Stone^.wl|«' ^ had starred in the original with Dave Montgomery, "Oklahoma!", based on the Riggs foUt-play which,*" had produced IS yeans earli^, was the most tJcf popular of the deca.de's ibeatricEd. offerings. "(Ji sounded a new high for the pli^ with music. Its ^ lyfics were painless stage literature «nd Its iscor^:^ (Continued on page 239)