Theatre: New Plays: Oct. 11, 1926

The Judge’s Husband. After a long, successful tour, William Hodge is backon Broadway starring in his own play. A Connecticut woman Justicehenpecks Mr. Hodge, makes him scrub, wash dishes. Hence, naturally, an unexplained visit to Manhattan to investigate an escapade of his turbulent daughter causes suspicion of infidelity. Mother as judge, witness, plaintiff, tries Mr. Hodge for divorce, and upon explanations all around is overcome by belated material passion. Assurances on the program by allegedly potent grey-wigs testify to the plot’s “legal possibilities,”presumably to sooth lay doubts. Gladys Hanson as the wife in trousers ably supports laconic, “stagey” Mr. Hodge.

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. It is a very wise crack that gets two laughs for its parent. Nevertheless, enjoyment of this long-awaited moronese farce by Anita Loos and John Emerson is not totally dependent upon one’s not having read the Loos novel. As for the uninitiated, their cup of joy is full.

The characters all spring vividly to life, led by June Walker who, though brunette by birth and nature, offers a perfect performance as the cooing, wide-eyed, traveling siren, Lorelei Lee. Edna Hibbard’s saucy nose, jaunty figure and coon-shouting voice add immensely to the personality of Lorelei’s hard-boiled girlfriend, Dorothy, upon whose caustic nature has been fathered the echo: “Brunettes prefer gentlemen.”

Lorelei Lee, as nearly every one knows, is the long-suffering little murderess from Arkansas whom a Mr. Gus Eisman, Chicagoan in the button profession, found in Holly-wood and “educated.” Her schoolroom is a suite at the Ritz, her text the Eisman checkbook. The play opens on shipboard, with Lorelei out-golddigging a pair of antique Britishers, what time she snares Henry Spoffard, a Presbyterian playboy from Philadelphia with millions to be diverted from moral uplift to Mr. Cartier’s jewelry store. She winds up in Manhattan having a three-day debut party with boys from the Racquet Club, simultaneously arranging her cinema career and marriage with Saphead Spoffard.

The Captive. To the credit of the censors be it said, they have suffered to pass a frank sex drama based on one of the social milieu’s unloveliest tragedies. It is a tense, well-constructed play, dealing with the plight of an Urning among men. The girl struggles against a homosexual compulsion with all the vigor of human will, only to succumb inevitably to her own nature, consumed entirely by Lesbian fires. Men, uncomprehending, fail to help her to escape from herself. She must return to her own. Perhaps the play’s weakness lies in just the same misfortune; that men and women of the audience find it hard to sympathize with these strange passions. Yet what is lacking of sympathy is counterbalanced by the peculiar fascination of a theme handled with the explicit deftness that only the French can attain in these matters.

To a difficult role, Helen Menken brings an unfailing art, frequently of superb power. Her hands alone express the quintessence of anguish. Basil Rathbone, the man married to the form of a woman, supports her with a smoothly finished, under-standing performance, as does Arthur Wontner whose work in the second act is one of the finest things the season has discovered.

Red Blinds. Lord Lathom of the British peerage wrote this one. It is all about a devilishly wicked woman who emits a continuous two and one-half hour flood of language that means little. The sooner His Lordship gets it back to merry England the better.

Happy Go Lucky. Sir James M. Barrie knows well how to extract merrimentfrom the male’s unfortunate predilection for flattery. The authors of Happy Go Lucky do not. Their book is a sorry business partially relieved— by Lucien Denni’s music and Madeline Cameron’s dancing. The best numbers are “Happy Melody” and “Choose Your Flowers.”

Sandalwood. Playwright Owen Davis, composite oracle, tries to qualify as another H. L. Mencken come to judgment. There is a character, Eddie, who decides to die of sleeping sickness rather than live thru the “piffle” of 100% American existence. Symbols of the objectionable “piffle” are assorted couples marked “big business,” “church,” etc., in labels so broad that the audience can not fail to catch every bit of the precioussignificance. Unfortunately, Eddie’s unconventional ladylove, the oracle’s superior mouthpiece, persuades him to go on living. To her, Eddie personifies the pagan God Pan. Just as she is about to take him away to Paris, Truth, and Beauty, Eddie’s little wife intervenes. This benighted creature, a Great Goddess Brown in tintype, soon convinces the audience that Eddie is not Pan at all but just plain 100% Eddie. The point is proved beyond a shadow of doubt, because Eddie votes for his wife and a musical instrument shop on Long Island in preference to Paris with the oracle’s mouthpiece. Once a Babbitt always a Babbitt. The idea that sticks out from behind this cheese-knife-like satire is: If you were not born to pseudointellectual pseudo-aristocracy, do not try to climb into it. On such tiresome conceit, Pauline Lord lavishes an exquisite performance.

The Woman Disputed. An Alsatian damsel, one Marie Ange, “no betterthan she should be,” becomes the raison d’etre of the noble love of a Yankee in the Foreign Legion and the hot. less noble, passion of a smirking Prussian war-dog. Marie Ange and some silly civilians endeavor to flee a town under the Prussian’s frightful regime. Caught, Marie Ange is promptly offered choice between death for herself and companions or giving herself to the Prussian. A spy’s crucial documents removed what doubts she had; she gave, but was subsequently reimbursed by her Yankee beau’s true love upon his inevitable reentry.

Lowell Sherman as the Hun beast who affects a cigaret at his execution, Anne Harding as the unfortunate good-bad lady, help to make a preposterous plot pleasantly endurable.

The Shelf. Febrile, mincing, exquisite Frances Starr portrays delightfully thelurid Mrs. Amaranth, come home to Kiwanisport, N. Y., from Europe and worse. Uneasy as a bird of plumage roosting in a barnyard, she is most uneasy of all lest she be considered “on the shelf.” Through three acts of easily forgettable humor she defends the honor of her sex appeal. Donald Meek, once again a hilariously henpecked clergyman, spend-thriftily purchases eight kisses from Mrs. Amaranth at his own church bazaar. Thenceforward it is but a step until the glittering and ever competent Arthur Byron, this time a scheming Senator, gold digs “the Governor” successfully— using Miss Starr as his spade. Skilful acting by almost all hands does not redeem an unskilful script.