The Theater: In Los Angeles

The Marriage Bed—Ernest Pascal, novelist, Ernest Pascal, film scenarist, becomes Ernest Pascal, playwright. While preparing dramas for the cinema he wrote a play, last week produced in Los Angeles with considerable California éclat and a good smattering of sound Manhattan theatre. It was an able play, staged with excellent ability by Robert Milton, famed Broadway director.* The principal performers were Alice Joyce and Owen Moore, cinemactors.

Following his novel of the same name Playwright Pascal proved why a wife should not divorce a husband who has been unfaithful. He placed his characters in the suburbs, brought the husband’s woman out to see them, had a thorough, earnest airing of the family dirty linen. Mr. Pascal does not try “to be funny about divorce, nor is he tragic. He is honest rather than brilliantly original.

Alice Joyce gave a good show, perhaps the best job that any potent cinema player attempting the stage has done to date. She cannot, as yet, match talents with experienced Manhattan actresses, but gives decided promise. Owen Moore, less good, played sullenly. Both were nervous, appalled by the mass of cinema potentates in the opening audience, purveyors of huge talking picture contracts to players who can talk.

* Outward Bound; He Who Gets Slapped.