Theatre: Laggard Season

Four new plays due in Manhattan last week were still getting steam up at way stations, but one musicomedy rolled into town. It was a little dusty from a tryout tour of five months, through New England, the Midwest and the South.

Smiling Faces (Harry Clarke, librettist; Harry Revel, composer; Mack Gordon, lyricist; Lee & Jake Shubert. producers) is notable chiefly for exhibiting Fred Stone as a most generous person. His daughter Paula had the leading female role on tour; Daughter Dorothy, as costar, has the role in Manhattan. Her husband, Charles Collins, has a prominent part. Comedian Stone saves most of his funny remarks for a scene in which he does an imitation of Will Rogers. (Four years ago when Comedian Stone was hurt in an airplane crash, Funnyman Rogers took his place in Three Cheers.) Except for that scene and his one good song (“There’s a Bluebird in My Window and a Landlord at My Door”) Fred Stone spends most of his time offstage.

Smiling Faces has an elaborately trite plot about a film actress (Dorothy Stone) who marries her fiance’s best friend (Roy Royston) to get in the social register so that she can wed the man she loves (Charles Collins) without costing him his, inheritance. It has one good tune (“Stumbled Over You”) and another with a line beginning “And soon a baby face. . . .” Like most Fred Stone shows it has few sexy jokes and those it has deal exclusively with the intermediate sex. Sample: “Since this is A Midsummer Night’s Dream, you don’t mind if I wander around among the fairies?” “That’s up to you—lead your own life.” He also has one or two opportunities to dance. Dorothy Stone and Doris Patston dance too. So do Messrs. Royston and Collins. All dance well, individually, in pairs and in threesomes. The chorus directed by Merriel Abbott dances better than nine white choruses out of ten. There is a great deal of dancing, but not quite enough. If everybody in it danced all the time Smiling Faces would be a fine show.