Life — April 5, 1929 — page 32: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

30 "Theatre. Stealing A Bow! ’ “HIS is a tough spot. With such illustrious predecessors as James Metcalfe and Robert Benchley I feel as though I am treading—maybe it’s trodding—on holy ground. They set so swift a pace I do not expect to keep up with them by ten city blocks. I bring little erudition and no dig- nity whatever to the job. A stooping comic receiving a wham slightly be- low where his suspenders cross, or a clout with a bladder, is more than like- ly to send me rolling into the aisle. I have laughed myself out of several town-halls and blubbered out loud at a little child in night dress stealing down from the nursery to the tele- phone to find out if Mama was in Heaven. That's the sort of critic you will find me. I'm just a layman with all the lay- man’s accumulative prejudices after paying $10.50 to peck around a post to sce a $2 show. If I have any lean- ings it will be toward the public that pays, and I have no expectation of be- coming one of the Rialto’s fair-haired boys. T expect to receive long, querulous telegrams from the lavender-shirted Flo. Ziegfeld, perhaps a friendly letter from Claude Greneker chiding me for not prefixing the estimable Shuberts with “Messrs” and maybe I'll be per- mitted to whiff the incense and hear the gongs while Belasco tugs at a white fetlock in the inner sanctum. Who knows? This is somewhat of an experiment on the part of both Lire and myself. I might not like the job and Lire "What do you mean, your wife's De, ‘Cpportunity?* Life ty” oO. ©. NiciIntyre might want a brighter boy. We are merely caracoling—care for it?—and have not snapped into our waltz. My knowledge of the theatre is not at all academic. I know nothing of baby spots, back drops and such, and possibly would not recognize a pros- cenium to gag up an old one, if one jumped in my lap. Plays that reg- ularly ordained critics dismissed with a wise crack have appealed to me as having the beauty and romance of a Viennese waltz. My only assets are a love of the theatre and a flop-eared country boy’s natural astonishment that actors are paid $1,000 a week. T have been thrilled by the theatre and a constant patron since, as a pro- gram boy in Gallipolis, O., I saw Della Fox in tights in “Wang” smoking a cigarette and singing something about a summer night and a babbling brook. I have followed show-boat bands up the levee to parade Front street, wept for the village heroine betrayed by the city chap and hissed when she received a stern father’s: “Out of my house, I'll have no dinner of your gittin’!” I have also occupied Ar at the Fol- lies and watched Diamond Jim Brady waddle down the aisle with a Dolly sister on each arm. There are few talked about plays in the past ten years I have not seen here and abroad, and I flatter myself I am entirely too “theatre-conscious” to be awed by Ethel Barrymore's throatiness or Otis Skinner's high-blown curtain speech. For instance, my playgoing has been fairly regular this season and I think the best entertainment value is not on the legitimate—I abhor that term— stage but in a talkie called “The Broad- way Melody.” Not the best show, mark you, but the best for the money. I think the most hilarious comedian of the season is Bert Lahr in “Hold Everything!” whose name is not etched in lights. I think one of the cutest tricks in musical comedy is lisp- ing Marjorie White, who is not even featured in “Lady Fingers.” Only one tune of the year to me has the evanescent quality called “haunt. ing” and that is “Lover, Come Back To Me!” in “New Moon”, and it is reminiscent of some fugitive, cluding strain of long ago. Were I to choose the best bit of emotional acting, sig- nalized by a rare restraint, I would bow in the direction of Alice Brady in a just so-so play called “A Mos Immoral Lady.” All this may give you a sketchy idea of my feeble fitness for a critical role and indicates what a break another “Abie’s Irish Rose” might get from me, Dramatic reviewing seems to me the least irksome of all writing. I look about the first-night aisles and sce the veteran Percy Hammond's rosy cheeks growing rosier. Burns Mantle, after 25 years of it, would look all right in a raccoon coat. And, of course, every. body knows the doddering Alexander Woollcott’s penchant for garlanding his hair with a jonquil to “dance in the streets.” If you like any of my reviews, write me. If you do not like them, write the editor. I am fixing it up with friends to send him enough boosts to offset your knocks anyway. Finally, you will find on this page no hair-raising critical observations or those studied but seemingly casual ref- erences to the Greek drama. I shall try honestly and may I say fairly to tell you what is going on in the the- atre and my loutish reaction to this, that and the other. And if in so doing I am able now and then to make you hear the single jingle of a jester’s bell I shall be tickled pink. Let's go! mn Pepper, salt Bes S 5 “Obits just vinegar on your S\\\, 27.913, cod phat = NY" Spinach, comicbooks.com