The Theatre: New Plays in Manhattan: Dec. 10, 1934

Gold Eagle Guy (by Melvin Levy; Group Theatre, producer). Taking a certain sombre satisfaction in having produced Pulitzer Prize-winning Men in White last season, the very earnest Group Theatre has brought forth another item in its series of interpretations of U. S. life. Gold Eagle Guy is not so much a play as a theatrical character study of the rise & fall of a San Francisco shipping tycoon from 1862 to 1906.

“Gold Eagle Guy” Button, a potbellied, acquisitive little seaman, is first discovered in a low bar. In & out drift some of the extraordinary figures of old San Francisco, including zany Emperor Norton I. Also present is famed oldtime Actress Adah Isaacs Menken, the “Divine Jewess” of Mazeppa. Guy Button insults her, gets a slap in the face. In return, he swears that she will change her mind about him. It turns out that he is right.

Steadily and ruthlessly Button rises to power. He squeezes a onetime benefactor out of his steamship business. He imports, under heartless conditions, coolie labor to build western railways. Finally, when pressed close to the wall by Japanese mercantile competition on the Pacific, “Gold Eagle Guy” purloins a load of gold from one of his own ships, then sends it to sea to sink with all hands.

It is Guy Button’s practice to call upon God as his witness when the honesty of his ventures is questioned. When his son accuses him of the murder of his seamen, Button automatically asks God to strike him dead if he is not innocent. According to Playwright Levy, God does, in the guise of the San Francisco earthquake.

Donald Oenslager’s collapsing stage set for the last scene provides as realistic a theatrical catastrophe as has been seen in Manhattan since The Storm. J. Edward Bromberg, the fatherly physician of Men in White, revels in his role of Guy Button, plays that bravura part to the hilt and beyond.

The Lord Blesses the Bishop (by Hatcher Hughes; Glen W. McNaughton, producer). Professor Hughes of Columbia University won the 1924 Pulitzer Prize with Hell-bent for Heaven. The Professor’s current opus is about a sophisticated artist who wants a baby, while his wife is only interested in amateur theatricals. The artist has the baby by an obliging French girl, an act which his wife takes with thoroughgoing good sportsmanship. Professor Hughes, in all probability, will not win the 1935 Pulitzer Prize with The Lord Blesses the Bishop.

Revenge with Music (words & music by Howard Dietz & Arthur Schwartz; Selwyn & Franklin, producers). Given settings by Albert Johnson, costumes by Constance Ripley, dance ensembles by Michael Mordkin and orchestrations by Robert Russell Bennett, the Princeton Triangle Club could put on a show which could hold its own with Revenge with Music. An expensive production by four of the leading technicians of the musical stage is all that really distinguishes the book and music by Schwartz & Dietz from something which might have been turned out for the McCarter Theatre.

From the Spanish fable, The Three Cornered Hat, Mr. Dietz has concocted a tale about a lecherous old provincial governor who lusts for the beauteous Maria, betrothed to the miller Carlos. Sample line, by the governor’s lonely wife: “I know what I want Santa Claus to bring me—a Christmas peasant.”

Neither Tenor George Metaxa, whose wife was killed in an automobile accident last March, nor Elsbeth (“Libby”) Hoiman Reynolds, whose husband was mysteriously shot two years before, add much to the color or amusement of the proceedings. Fluffy-haired old Charles Winninger gets his biggest laugh when, as the rutty governor, he falls into a mill race filled with real water.

Mr. Schwartz’s fair-to-middling tunes: “Maria,” “You & The Night & The Music,” “That Fellow Manuelo.”

Page Miss Glory (by Philip Dunning & Joseph Schrank; Schwab & Dunning, producers) is a broad farce about the beauty prize racket. A pair of idlers are about to be tossed out of Manhattan’s non-existent Ritz-Plaza Hotel for failure to pay their board bill when one, a composite photographer by trade, hits upon the idea of manufacturing with his lens the most beautiful girl in the U. S. A laxative firm is offering $2,500 for her picture. She is given Greta Garbo’s eyes, Constance Bennett’s hair, Myrna Loy’s lips, Katharine Hepburn’s nostrils, Norma Shearer’s elbows, Claudette Colbert’s knees, Marlene Dietrich’s legs. The synthetic belle wins the prize and her creators are eating high off the hog until the nation’s Press demands a look at the original. In desperation they dust off and beautify a love-loving chambermaid to fill their need. As the chambermaid happens to be impersonated by that sultry siren, Dorothy Hall, their task is not as difficult as it sounds. By the time the curtain falls, Messrs. Dunning and Schrank have ruthlessly kidded every metropolitan institution from the Brooklyn Eagle to Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia.

Africana (by Donald Heywood; John Mason, producer). Negro Donald Keywood, the Noel Coward of Harlem, recently returned from a trip to Africa. His visit inspired him to write Africana, billed as a serious Negro operetta. African atmosphere is supplied by a King Yafouba, a Prince Soyonga and a chorus of “African jumpers.”

On the opening night one Almany Daouda Camara, 29, of No. 2667 Eighth Avenue, who described himself as a French teacher and onetime member of the Foreign Legion, was taken into custody by the police after he had marched down the aisle, banged the orchestra leader over the head with a chair and made threatening gestures at Author Heywood. Negro Camara complained that, as a technical expert on the production, he had not received proper program credit.