The Theatre: New Plays in Manhattan: Dec. 6, 1937

THE THEATRE

Of Mice and Men (by John Steinbeck: produced by Sam H. Harris), like the best-seller it faithfully follows, takes a squinty look at life among the bindle stiffs, reports out of the side of its mouth in short, hair-raising words. A soundly written, expertly produced play, its close-knit suspense timed to the last held breath, it seemed fated by first-nighters’ extraordinary enthusiasm to extraordinary success. Some partisans, reading between its hard-bitten lines a sweeping social preachment, freely prophesied that it would win the Pulitzer Prize. Even those who saw in it only a macabre folk-melodrama applauded the play’s outspokenness and sincerity.

The play show’s the strange, tragic comradeship of Lennie, a huge, fetish-bound dullard whose innocent pleasure was to pet small, furry things, whose vice was his crazy strength that inevitably killed the things he loved to touch; and George, a wiry, roadwise nomad whose chief job in life was looking after Lennie. The hopeless fairy tale that George (Wallace Ford) tells Lennie (Broderick Crawford) over and over about the little house on the little piece o’ land, with an alfalfa patch and rabbits for Lennie to pet, where one day they will live “off the fatta the land” was more than a bedtime story. It was George’s dream, and the dream of every wandering ranch hand who reaps the planting of others, collects his fifty a month, moves on to other planters’ harvests.

George actually had such a place spotted, was within $150 of being able to swing it, with the help of the savings of old Candy, the swamper (John F. Hamilton). Then Lennie, without meaning to, kills the boss’s son’s wife and George mercifully shoots him before the lynchers get there.

The fate of the play lay in the hands of young Broderick Crawford. 210-lb. ex-football player, son of Comedienne Helen Broderick. Built up into a hulking, shuffling imbecile by means of four-inch shoes and padded shoulders, Crawford won sympathy for a monstrous character, playing Lennie as a pathetic giant who kills as innocently as an unintentionally offending child. Next to Crawford’s goosefleshy characterization, that of Actor Hamilton as Candy came closest to the realism Author Steinbeck strove for.

The Ghost of Yankee Doodle (by Sidney Howard; produced by Theatre Guild. Inc.). Though more and more social problem plays invade the Manhattan stage, few are good, none great, for good plays are written by gagmen, poets, wits, fakers but not by ax-grinders. Audiences still like Shaw and Ibsen, not for their lectures on social reform, but for their conceits, paradoxes, taut drama. Last week, in a muddled play that brought a famed U. S. actress out of retirement, this perennial fact was underscored again.

From the first moment of the play, when she prances in leading a snake dance around a Christmas tree, it is clear that two-and-a-half years’ vacation have done Ethel Barrymore good. Her Royal Family tricks are polished up. She lowers her eyebrows and leers Barrymorishly, poses in her swishing draperies. Her voice still sounds like a primeval maiden’s wailing for a demon lover. She still brings to the theatre talent in such abundance that, compared to her, most other actresses are as watery custard to rich plum pudding.

Playwright Howard’s ungainly plot confuses a timely theme. In the face of another world war, a Midwestern family of liberals tests its convictions. To save the Garrisons from bankruptcy, and safeguard the jobs of their many employes, Sara Garrison (Ethel Barrymore), a widow, consents to wed the rich owner of a national newspaper chain. Played by Dudley Digges, top-notch Irish actor, Publisher James Madison Clevenger combines genius and jingoism, and with inflammatory editorials goads the U. S. into declaring war. Sara jilts him but admits the defeat of her principles. The idealistic Garrisons sit helpless before the juggernaut of mass emotion pushed on by the profiteers.

Veteran Playwright Sidney Howard, turning his hand to ax-grinding, bungles Yankee Doodle because he tries to run a three-ring circus, swarming with characters and subplots, because his Garrisons, capable and courageous for seven scenes, become suddenly ineffective in the end. All the puffing build-up ends in a sighing letdown.