The Theatre: New Plays in Manhattan: Oct. 27, 1930

Girl Crazy. The pleasantest interlude in Girl Crazy, a conspicuously pleasant show, is furnished by a quartet of young men sufficiently resembling cowboys who amble across the stage three times in the first act and sing a sweet, lazy little song called “Bidin’ My Time (That’s the Kind of Guy I’m).” The attraction also contains the best music George & Ira Gershwin have written since Oh, Kay!, an outstandingly comely chorus, talented and virginal

Ginger Rogers and Allen Kearns — the Easterner whose father has banished him to the badlands. But biggest asset to the show is the person of Ethel Merman who, as a honkeytonk singer, strolls out on the stage at the Act I finale and electrifies spectators by shouting “Sam & Delilah,” an extremely low-down Gershwinian num -ber with a deep blue base. It is also Miss Merman who, in another piece, croons:

How could I have grown so To love that dirty SO-&-SD? Look what love has done to me!

The comedy is furnished chiefly by Willie Howard, a pathetic-looking Levantine, who, having driven Mr. Kearns out West in his taxicab, is elected sheriff and spends most of his time disguised as an Indian to elude the tough hombres.

Three’s A Crowd has for its principals the triple-threat team of last year’s Little Show: nimble, spindle-shanked, emaciated Clifton Webb; droll, ready-voiced Fred Allen; mellifluous, primordial Libby HolmanSo excellent is the work of these three performers that the framework of the show seems almost negligible. Best scenes of the headliners:

Clifton Webb, staggering around a weird barroom full of grotesque, masked figures, some of whom sway in cadence on rockered bar stools, some of whom drink from gargantuan champagne glasses filled by two-headed attendants. Climax comes when Mr. Webb seizes and strips one of the patrons, rushes her offstage.

Libby Holman, backed up against a black velvet drop, performing economical, graceful gestures with her fingers, ably ululating an English importation called “Body & Soul.” Rear-Admiral Fred Allen, attired in Antarctic haberdashery, lecturing before an incomprehensible hodgepodge projected on the screen (“the base camp”), explaining that his expedition has discovered and claimed “not ten, not 20, but 100,000 sq. mi. of brand new snow for the U. S.” Also Fred Allen wondering if he whistled in his sleep: “When I woke up this morning there were four dogs in bed with me.” Twelfth Night. Perhaps because the works of William Shakespeare are reputed ageless, most recent Shakespearean productions have been rigged out with modernistic settings, actors in mufti, sundry sensationalisms. In tune with her time, Jane Cowl has for her stage settings a huge book of Shakespeare which is unfolded to make various scenes. Her performance as Viola is lively, her grace and beauty are used to good effect. But Leon Quartermain gives the most worthy interpretation, bringing rich and affecting pathos and frustration to the difficult role of pompous Major Domo Malvolio.

Among firstnighters were Mary Louise (“Texas’) Guinan and James Joseph (“Gene”) Tunney. Scholar Tunney went behind between acts, offered Miss Cowl his “fe-li-ci-ta-tions” on a “per-fect-ly de-light-ful” performance.

Blind Mice. The all-female cast in this show is composed of 18 inmates of a working women’s hotel. Such a situation has comparatively fresh dramatic potentialities, but the story is archaic and the fact that all dealings with the unseen men characters have to be carried on offstage strips the play of vigor. The main events are thus approached obliquely. When Miss Claiborne Foster wishes to convey the idea that her rich lover has deserted her, that her employer—the proprietor of the drugstore in which she works—has consented to marry her though she is pregnant, the action must be signified by speeches to her fellow-guests in the waiting room of the hostelry.

Princess Charming. Even with a book rewritten by the late Hoofer Jack Donahue, music by Albert Sirmay and Arthur Schwartz, scenery by Joseph Urban, Princess Charming might have been a presentation more on the lavish side than on the entertaining. The fact that it has sparkle and distinction is almost entirely attributable to blithe, blonde, beauteous Jeanne Aubert, the French comedienne whose husband (Packer Nelson Morris of Chicago) lately sought to enjoin her from taking part in theatricals. Audiences were delighted with her genuine Franco-American accent,* her thoroughgoing naughtiness, her lip-twisting method of vocal delivery —first brought to fame when she popularized the Parisian songlet Si Tu Vois Ma Tante.

Although the spice of the performance, Actress Aubert’s part in Princess Charming is somewhat vague, she being an adventuress through whose boudoir a great many comic figures flit back and forth.

The play itself has to do with a very complicated royal romance in the kingdoms of Elyria and Novia. As the Princess, Evelyn Herbert {The New Moon) is luscious-looking, hits good rich notes but experiences difficulty in making the lyrics intelligible. No such impediment is suffered by Actress Aubert who, in spite of her unfamiliarity with the language, manages to stop the show with a charming, multiple-rhymed ballad called “I Love Love,” in which at one point she laments :

But, damn it, you’re Just another amateur.

Solid South is the story of how two Pittsburgh millionaires—father & son—pierce the Mason-Dixon line, win the hands of two aristocratic daughters—widow & child—of the Confederacy. Antagonistic to the Yankees’ scheme is the ladies’ father-in-law and grandfather, Major Bruce Follonsby (Richard Bennett). If the play is meant to satirize life in the South, or even the stage-idea of life in the South, it fails.

London Calling. This is the sort of theme that Author Pelham Grenville Wodehouse likes to play with. There is a charming young Englishman who makes a sudden appearance in Manhattan, bows his way into the apartment of his U. S.

brother whom he has never seen, promptly falls into a deep alcoholic sleep. Then he gets a job selling securities, prevents his brother from marrying a young woman of whose shortcomings only the trans-Atlantic relative is aware. At the final curtain, Manhattan has been made a better place to live in by the visiting Englishman. Geoffrey Kerr wrote the play, ably acts the lead, but he is no Wodehouse.

*Leading exponents of this accent on the U. S. stage are Actresses Irene Bordoni (born in Ajaccio, Corsica); Ina Claire (born Pagan, in Washington, D. C.).