Theatre: New Play in Manhattan: Nov. 1, 1937

Angel Island (by Bernie Angus; produced by George Abbott) lures a company of glinty-eyed weekenders to its shores with tales of buried treasure. Two murders are done, everybody suspects everybody else, while the audience keeps its eye on the shifty butler. Finally a character who might easily have been an innocent bystander is shot down as the culprit. A thriller with so pat a formula is usually expected to move posthaste off the Broadway boards, but with the guidance of respected Play-Picker George Francis Abbott, this one, blackouts, screams, rowdy humor and all, seems likely to remain for a time.

Play Wizard Abbott has had uncommon success in the last few years pulling rabbits out of shabby theatrical hats and then turning them into ermine. Angel Island is the first produced playwriting attempt of Mrs. Howard Angus, wife of a Manhattan advertising executive. She is a frequent writer of magazine thrillers, but her chief avocation is etching, which she studied under Joseph Pennell. Mrs. Angus has called herself Bernie (short for Bernadine ) since she began to write for magazines. She believed editors were more receptive to male manuscripts. Satisfied with Angel Island, pleased that Hollywood has bid $30,000 for it, Abbott is sending Mrs. Angus’ only other play, Brown Sugar (formerly Home Sweet Harlem) into rehearsal this week.

As proof that Producer Abbott’s sympathetic impulses are guided by a hard head or a hot hunch, Broadway wiseacres pointed to his phenomenal success with last season’s Room Service, which he sold to RKO Radio for $255,000. Room Service was a washed-up play property when unknown Playwrights John Murray & Allen Boretz brought it to Abbott. Sam Harris had tried it out in Philadelphia two years earlier with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer money. It was a $23,000 flop; When the Harris option lapsed, Abbott looked at the script, felt warmly toward it because it was about Broadway, suggested a few changes. The authors condensed three scenes into one, picked a tag for it out of the second act, Abbott sent it on to wild acclaim. In similar warmhearted fashion he undertook Brother Rat because it was a play about youngsters written by youngsters (John Monks Jr. & Fred F. Finklehoffe, V. M. I. ’32). It had been returned by 31 other managements. The Abbott touch converted it into a Broadway hit, a $150,000 film property (Warners). Producer Abbott prefers to pick his plays out of the grab bag, or help write them himself, as he did Broadway (with Philip Dunning), Coquette (with Ann Preston Bridgers), Three Men On A Horse (with John Cecil Holm). He has produced plays by established authors, like the Bella & Samuel Spewack Boy Meets Girl, but his experience with warranted materials has not always been pleasant. Last year he presented Sweet River, an adaptation of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. It flopped.