Daily News from New York, New York • 208

51 SWEARING IS SWELL THIS YEAR The Bolder Dramas Have Achieved She Was the Rewrite Man's Daughter SUNDAY NEWS, AUGUST 26, 1928 Perfect Freedom at Last a By BURNS MANTLE. If the girls and boys in the rear pews will kindly stop their giggling I should like to reassure, or at least to speak to their anxious parents as to the current trend of the goddam drama, as we liberals jokingly classify it. I don't believe we have ever started a season more boldly than we have this one, or taken a fiercer joy in the public featuring of our more popular depravities. I have not seen all the new plays, but I have seen enough to convince me for one thing that the swearing is simply swell this year. It has practically made "The Front Page" the hit it is, the more advanced of our fellows think.

True, few words new to the modern, or Mae West, drama have been introduced in this play, but all the old ones are used with impressive ease and with such utter abandon the effect is, if you don't care what you say, quite charming. Most of the worst words are repeated again in Willard Mack's new play, ''Gang War." And here again the technique governing their utterance is most expert. Bill certainly knows his curses. He learned to swear in the west, where cursing is cursing. Especially around the corrals and the round- Willard Mack -stef I I fT'" iv I ops.

And, of course, in the good old saloons. The saloon! There's another issue! However I may vote, I stand absolutely with Al Smith when he takes oath against the oldtime saloon. It never shall come back, says Al And he is rig. t. We don't need the saloon any more.

Not with the stage doing what it is in providing a place for the exercise of the viler expletives. What did the saloon have that the home party of today is not reproducing in the way of good oldtime backroom and family entrance atmosphere! MAE WEST WILL NEXT EXPOSE HER BACKSTAGE" "Backstage" is the title of the latest Mae West masterpiece, which the star will use as her next vehicle following the run of "Diamond Lil." Miss West, as you already know, has been responsible for "Sex," "The Drag' and "The Wicked Age" as well. ----Jl3-JL-J i JHuuitiMiMaiM mim i irtnViMffir BETTY LANCASTER and JOHN CROMWELL come to town tomorrow night in the season's second newspaper drama, "Gentlemea of the Press," written by Ward Morehouse, who is one of them himself. Cromwell plays a vicious rewrite man who is fed up with being a journalistic hireling andresigns to take a job as a publicity purveyor. To make matters worse, his daughter, played by Betty, elopes with a Holyoke newspaper reporter which means two more mouths for papa to feed.

She breaks the news to him in the city room. one-half so cozy as the. night club and the speak-easy-for-fear-the lieutenant-will-hear-you Or the parked coupe? And the hostesses of the past? Did they run their houses and their ballrooms with the same air, with that same persotial attention to the suckers, that the hostesses of the present Never! And did they separate their guests, even with the extra tax they placed against bottled beer, did they rob their guests any more graciously or with any greater ease than do our better known ginger ale hostesses today? Certainly not The Stage As a Disseminator. The stage is not creative. It is reflective.

The stage does not establish or popularize a custom or a style. It merely helps enormously to make it common. Take the matter of the off -color anecdote as an example. The best of these used to be circulated by drummers among their clients. Transportation being slower and more uncertain in those days it would take a story involving the Mann act, for instance, months to reach everybody the first time.

And at least weeks before it got around a second time. Now they put it in Mr. Carroll's "Vanities" and it reaches hundreds every night. Some of the ripest of the older anecdotes are not only retold in the "Vanities," but carefully illustrated to give them greater force and effect. Mr.

Carroll does not believe in hiding anything. Let the world see all, hear all, know all! That's his motto. The fact that he was shut out for a time from contact with his nastier fellows evidently stimulated Somerset Maugham's new and I as yet untitled play will have according to report, Mary Jerrold and Hubert Herben featured in the cast Oscar Wilde's ACTS WITH BROTHER i i MjiX' "An Ideal Hus- FAY COMPTON IS COMING OVER Fay Compton, British star, will Actor's Children produced soon at Chicago's "Money Lender." come here from England to play the leading role in the new Franz his determination to work for a greater freedom of expression in all directions when he should be returned to societv. Drama house ra Howard, wife of Samuel 1 d-wyn, may return to the stage, playing her original role Frances Howard Molnar comedy, "Olympia," which opens Oct. 8 at Henry Miller's theatre.

Her best-known successes here and abroad were "Quality Street," "Mary i i and "Tea for Three." 4 1 7 if Consequently the new "Vanities," or at least the current "Vanities" there is so little new under the spots these days the current "Vanities" is quite the roughest of the series and the most completely stripped. In the production of staged entertainment all things work eventually to the advantage of the man who knows. In the dead and gone days such simple-minded codgers as James A. Herne and Denman Thompson specialized in the homely old quartet and hayrack drama; Charles Frohman was skilled in picking drawing room plays in London and reproducing them in the Hollywood production of "The Best People" George Abbott will direct pictures for Paramount. The Chanin brothers have decided to quit the hazardous producing racket and will hereafter be AdLJ Earl Carroll content with- building theatres, hotels and skyscrapers.

A few such ventures as "Revelry" are responsible for their loss of interest in Broadway matters. "The K. Guy," a new play tried out in Denver with Sylvia Sidney and Frances Goodrich, is all about a Sophie Tuck- Fay Comptwa er has been entertaining the Ostend nightflier3 recently with her mammy songs. Elsie Janis is joining "Clowns in Clover" in London. Mary Garden denied being engaged to Pierre Plessi, French writer.

A daughter of Henrik Ibsen, famous dramatist, will soon make her stage debut in a Paris revue under the name of Miss Lili Bill. She is married to a Norwegian A notorious forger of checks. It was written by Walter De Leon and A 1 a Luce. Out on the coast the boys are writing newspaper plays, too. One of them is called "Dynamite," the work of Edwin Booth in America; William Gillette specialized in -the more refined melodramas; Mr.

Belasco was expert in holding mirrors up to hollyhocks and sandstorms, Mr, Ibsen in exposing the Slavic soul, and- so on. Specializing As an Art. Specialization is no less effective today. Boys with a real feeling for lavatory drama bring it to life most tellingly. Playwrights with sympathetic understanding of crime and those who profit from crime give of their knowledge till it hurts.

The author, producers and actors of "Elmer Gantry," specializing in sofa and pulpit seductions, bring the personal touch of experience to strengthen their reproduction. Mr. Brady, having had contact with the John Roach Straton type of explosive religionists, burlesques them coarsely and cruelly in his theatre, sending a white-robed choir of painted trumpeters and singers to parade in front of the theatre as a ballyhoo for exposures within the playhouse. The oleaginous Edward Pawley blows a foul breath into the figure of the hypocritical Gantry, reproduces a staccato realism of speech reminiscent of Richard Bennett and brings the detestable creation of Main street's happiest cynic to life. Thus by linking the crude, the vicious and the vile with the merely ignorant professional peddlers of religion he belittles a faith that is the spiritual prop of decent millions.

No, those parents among you who are one in believing your fast growing progeny should know life need hot fear that the stage is slipping in its determination to expose it for you. Until the mayor is through with his tailors, and the governor is through with his campaign, until the district attorney is through with whatever is occupying him at the moment," and the dirt hunters are back from the shore the stage is pretty sure to revel viciously in its freedom. You know how it goes. With the cats away the rats will play. I care little for the cats, but, gosh, how I detest the rats.

Sylvia Sidney THE GOLDEN DOZEN Current attraction la Nfw York theatre that have recorded Ion-eat raw. Dramatic Name Prrtormaaeea "The 713 "Trial of Mary Dugan" r485 "Coquette" 341 "The Royal .279 "The Silent 235 "The Bachelor Father" 207 Musical Comedies "Good 414 "Connecticut Yankee" 350 "Show Boat" 282 "Rosalie" 267 "Rain or .231 "Three Musketeers" 1S5 KATHERINE STANDING and her younger brother, Guy children of Sir Guy Standing, well-known English actor, will both be in the lineup of "The Money Lender" this week. Kath-erine plays the leading feminine role and young Guy plays an English lord. Miss Standing supported E. H.

Sothern in "What Never Dies" several seasons ago, while her brother made his debut with Ethel and John Barrymore in "Claire de Lune." and Carroll Graham "The Great Necker" and "Sunny Days" were the only shows- left in Boston last week "Mid Channel," Pinero revival, proved a San Francisco failure. The Cort theatre is now being operated by Joe Leblang for the benefit of th John Cort creditors and stockholders..