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The Brooklyn Daily Eagle from Brooklyn, New York • Page 48

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Brooklyn, New York
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48
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8 TREND SECTION I Or THI BROOKLYN IAGLI SUNDAY, OCTOBER 12, 1941 1. Claudia's Someone Everybody Knows That's One of Things Play's Patrons Write Friends at Golden's Expense John Golden does not advertise his production of "Claudia" at the Booth Theater as carrying any premium with the purchase of each ticket. There is no possibility that any member of the audience will win a set of dishes, an encyclopedia, or have a chance at an accumulated bingo amount, X' iriVw 7 T' 1 IBM I IKS (5 MARGARET DALE and Gertrude Lawrence at work in the that does not keep the heroine busy enough in "Lady in the office of the smart magazine Dark" at the Alvin Theater. that the writer and his wife are planning to pay a visit to the addressee soon, or that he saw Cousin Joe the other day -and he looked fine. The extraordinary thing about the cards at "Claudia" Is that they have been availed of by so many people.

More than 130,000 cards have been mailed by the head usher of the Booth Theater since "Claudia" opened last February, or about 480 cards for each of the 271 performances at which "Claudia" has been given a much higher figure for postal mailings than any Broadway show has recorded In a long time. Some patrons have been caught In sending as many as five or six messages to friends (at a penny each) by this means, but all have been duly stamped and mailed. For a while the company manager made it a practice to glance at all the card and see If any patrons were filling In the blank by saying they did not like "Claudia." Even those, it was planned, would be mailed at the expense of John Golden, but with a follow-up letter seeking to overcome the bad opinion by giving quotations from all the critics who had liked the play on Its opening night, so that recipients of the unfavorable postcards would be sure to get both sides of the question. Since, however, adverse opinions turned out to be so rare that finding them was comparable to hunting a needle in a haystack, there is no longer any reading of PASSED IN REVIEW By ROBERT FRANCIS "We ought to get us some front," says Cobb Walters to his partner, after an object lesson from a crooked promoter. So Cobb wins his front in a poker game a fistful of oil leases located around his home town of Lebanon, a panama hat and a yellow car.

With this combination he embarks on a career as turbulent and colorful as any in current fiction. and underscores with complete understanding all the selfishness, blind complacency, spiritual wreckage and triumph of a community gone mad with the advent of too sudden wealth. There Is drama In this modern tale of oil. It Is told with sympathy and honesty. Its folk are virile and human, neither too good nor too bad, just an average group of small town men and women energized and victimized by forces unlikely to come again.

SQUARE GARDEN MATINEES TODAY AND TOMORROW, 2:30 WORLD'S CHAMPIONSHIP lent and unprincipled period, an era of panic and violent reconstruction RODEO MADISON ru Oct. 26) ARTHUR TREACHER, Virginia Field and Ethel Merman, who have played important parts in the success of "Panama Hattie," the musical treat now more than 400 performances old at the 46th Street Theater. RODEO With GENE AUTRY in Person kimos, real water, a realistic snowstorm and pans of real pine oil for atmosphere everything! Except a plot and an audience. So It flopped, end I was broke again, and that was the last time I wrote ft play." The year "Heart of Alaska" met with sudden death, a new Industry was budding in and around New York a novel entertainment medium called "the movies." In 1909, Carey went to work for one of the pioneering outfits, the now-historic 0 11 Harry Carey Killed Time and Was a Hit Old 'Biograph Burglar' Back on the Stage in O'Neill's 'Ah, Wilderness' H. De Witt Carey 2d Harry Carey to you was born In Etaten Island on a cold January morning, 1878, son of Justice Henry De Witt Carey of Special Sessions Court.

Carey- who was a Tammany politician, set his heart on Carey Jr. being a lawyer, so young Harry obligingly enrolled at N. Y. law school, where he distinguished himself by working twice as hard on the football i fl it 30M SIATS It tun 1 3s Cobb Walters uses his stake to "make an oil well" and incidentally to remake his home town. Such is the basts of "Thunder In the Earth" by Edwin Lanham (Har-court, Brace and Company.

There Is nothing vicious or crooked about Cobb Walters. He is strictly of his day and environment, a lusty, two-fisted product of the derricks and drills; essentially a good-natured, kindly lad, a little drunk with luck and more than a bit of the time with corn whisky. He is merely a symbol of an era. Farm boy, driller, roustabout, a failure at 25 and a millionaire a few months later, it Is hardly difficult to understand the compulsions which turn a youngster endowed with little more than native shrewdness Into a reckless and blindly selfish man. Too much good luck Is Cobb's trouble.

Luck with oil, luck with women. He- has a way with the latter. There are three of them In his life, one, who mothers him and helps him get his start, another who represents the fulfillment of a boyish dream, and a third who really belongs beside him. He has to come to the ragged edge of ruin before he realizes the last. It Is even doubtful, then, that he has learned his lesson.

Apparently, he is ready and alert to begin the whole cycle all over again. For the scene of this, his latest novel, the author of "The Wind Blew West," returns to his native Texas for his material. It is the Texas of the early 1930's with the last of the great oil booms at its peak. "Thunder In the Earth" Is the saga of Cobb Walters, but It is an even more compelling picture of an hysterical upheaval of a whole town under the spell of the magic word, "oil." Lebanon has been a sleepy farming and cattle center. With the gush of liquid riches from the earth, overnight It becomes a focal point of feverish excitement.

"Ragtown" is its natural corollary, mushroom haven of the riffraff and backwash always arriving in the wake of such strikes. Mr. Lanham knows the oil fields and the people of them. He writes boldly and vividly of a vio- The Weit's bt cowboy and cowgirl Hdtn wildest horttt tn championship contests at every performance. Mounted Basketball Big Round-up famous Teias Long-horns.

It New York's bigiest Thrill-Show! Rsi. (1.45 to UM Every NIte 1:30 Moti. Sals. A Suns. 2:30 SPECIAL COCUMIUS DAY MAT.

TOMORROW Children Half Price All Tickets at flirdsn Bex OMes aits' if? WHtirn Union Officii la Mst, arts MANHATTAN HCTDnoni iTsy inbi nvi uli inn MOUtl preiantt MADISON SQUARE GARDEN a the cards before they are mailed. But before the reading of cards was given up It was observed that the most frequent message was something to the effect that Claudia herself reminded the writer of some one In his own family which may account for the popularity of this play: The fact that Claudia is some one everybody seems to know. was going to get Carey back out there to do It. Telegrams flew frantically back and forth cross-country. In the end, Carey capitulated.

"I always pick my pictures by their directors," he explained. So back he went to Hollywood and It was no walk-on. It strengthened the general conviction that reviewers and producers had first gotten from Carey's remarkable portrayal of the Vice President in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," that here was an actor who was more than a Western star, more than one "type" an actor versatile and accomplished in whatever kind of role he chose to play, The Theater Guild, realizing this, was quick to send an emissary out to the Carey ranch, when it first decided to produce "Ah, Wilderness!" as the opening play of its new Revival Series. For Carey seemed in every way Ideal to portray the gentle and kindly Nat Miller proprietor of a Connecticut newspaper in a "large small town" and central point of interest In O'Neill's comic masterpiece.

It Is due partly to the Guild's persistence, and partly to the Immense appeal of Nat Miller as a character, that Harry Carey returned to Broadway as the highlight of the return engagement of "Ah, STAGE PLAYS tZT TONIGHT at 8:30 S. HUSOK SALLET However, patrons at that Rose Franken play, ever since Us opening, have been given an extra service which has proved highly popular. This has consisted of a friendly greeting to friends or relatives with whom patrons have been wanting to communicate anywhere In the United States and at no cost. At the end of the first act each member of the audience is handed a postcard by an usher for use in letting his friends or relatives know what he thought of the play. At the end of the second act intermission those postcards are collected by the ushers and mailed.

As a prod to epistolary efforts, the massage part of the postcard's back has the beginning of a communication printed on it, which reads: "Dear I have Just seen John Golden's production of Rose Franken's 'Claudia' at the Booth Theater and I think it is This kind of postcard has been used by various stage play productions ever since it was first devised by Mr. Golden for "Three Wise Fools" in 1919, on the assumption that the best possible advertising for a play is that which is given to his acquaintances by a man who has seen it the mouth-to- mouth comment which keeps plays going. The patrons at "Claudia" as at most other Golden productions. have willingly lent themselves to this exploitation scheme, because under the printed start of the communication there is room for their personal message. The usual postal user pays a slight price for this friendly communication by saying he thinks "Claudia" is 'charming," "delightful," "mar velous." "swell," "wonderful" or something else superlative.

And then he follows this up with news that Bobby's cough is better or At-The-Pass star in Hollywood, having to date headed 'em off In about 400 films. It was while working at the old Universal Studios that Carey bor rowed $100 from President Carl Laemmle and bought himself 150 acres of land near Hollywood, whlcn he and his wife set about home- steading with professional efficiency. The 150 acres are now 1,300, and the Careys, with their two children, son Doble, 19, and daughter Cappie, 18, do the farming them selves and love it. Possibly that was what gave Carey Sr. the urge to get back behind the footlights and see how the legitimate theater would feel after 27 years away from It.

At any rate, he was lured eastward two seasons ago by a role in "Heavenly Express" that fantasy which drew such mixed reviews and too few customers to last long. Carey's reviews, however, were aefinitely and unanimously enthu- lastlc. From then on he was be-' leged with stage offers, and hav ing gotten the Broadway greasepaint back under his skin, he decided to stay East for a while. Gar- son Kanln, out In Hollywood cast ing the film version of "They Knew What They Wanted," decided otherwise. He wanted Carey for a role in that picture, he didn't want anybody else, and If he had to move heaven and earth to manage it, he Mister Toojtmoiter' Alas, that It should be necessary to recommend "We Have With Us Tonight," by G.

Lynn Sumner (Harper and But the orators who continue to arise with nothing to say and a dogged determination to say that nothing at length continues to flourish and great Is the suffering of banqueteers up and down the land. It is for the benefit of those trapped into listening that Mr. Sumner, from ripe years of experience with that urbane host, the Advertising Club of New York, addresses his remarks to the talkers. And to the chairmen of the committees and the toastmas-ters, too. Mr.

Sumner practices what he preaches in the writing of his book, sticking to the point and resolutely rejecting the temptation to wander afield. Incidentally, he seems to regard, and justly, this straying off the reservation as the cardinal sin, on a par with overstaying one's welcome up there on the dais. He admonishes the toastmaster to stick his timetable and that each speaker be Informed politely, but firmly, how long he Is to be allowed to air his views. And best of all, says he: "Don't tell a story in dialect un less you have a talent for it. "Be-gorra' doesn't make you an Irish man.

"I tank' doesn't make you a Swede." And next best of all, he reminds Mr. Toastmaster that the gathering has assembled not to hear him but the distinguished guests he is sup posed to introduce. A mighty wise little book Is "We Have With Us Tonight." It ought to be required reading for anybody with the urge to get up and talk to the folks over the coffee and cigars. Women's club chairmen could read It for their own profit, too. varsity as he did in the classroom.

He never took his bar exams. Illness intervened and sent him to bed for two months. "I killed time there by writing a itory," Harry explains. "At least. I thought I was writing a story.

But when I finished, I discovered It was all dialogue, except for the "he saids' and 'she saids' so I took thero out and called it a play." He named the opus "Montana," and to his amazement a church dramatic group took It over, imported a couple of professional ac tors to help carry It, and produced it-so successfully that Carey took over the hero's role and took "Montana" on tour. In Reading, Pa Klaw and Erlanger discovered the show, gave Carey a contract and kept him playing the hero in his own play for three years. "The success went to my head In the worst way," Carey confessed sadly. "I blew all my 'Montana' profits on a second brainchild. Called it The Heart of and it was a daisy.

That play had everything: Eight sled real Es Ol MONTI CARLO TONIGHT Sch.har.iid., Th. N. York.r, labyrinth TOMOMOW EVE. Roug. at Neir, M.glc Swan (U.

S. r.mlara). Vlanna 1114 Rav Of frr Nnvf flnan MAIL ORDERS PROMPTLY FILLED. E.i. Inel.

Sun. ISe fa SMS. LHJAUIIIienUnULien M.l. this Saturday and Oct. 21 and No.

ISe to S1.7S. 1000 Sott at 85c and $1.10 ot Evry Prformanc Biograph Company. "I was the official Biograph Burglar," he grins now. "Whenever there were any jewels to be stolen, or valuable papers or heroines, I did It; you might say I got typed as a second-story worker!" In 1911, D. W.

Griffith brought Carey down off the second-story beat and took him to Hollywood where his first role was in a sea story, "The Sorrowful Shore." All Carey remembers about it is that he had to rescue a lovely lady from drowning. He remembers that very well, because the lovely lady he rescued is now Mrs. Carey. From then on, the name Harry Carey appeared in so many films In quick succession that even he can't remember them all. Most of them were Westerns, and Carey became the most popular Head-'Em-Off- "It Happens on Ice," which a party by way of celebration.

I ta is 'M -j LAST 2 WEEKS! TODAY at 3 and 8:40, "THE GREEN TABLE" "Gorgtout bltnd of ballmt and drama." Robert Coleman, Mirror POPULAR PRICES: Eva. Unci. Sun.) Me to ti.20. Mull. gat.

and 85c ta 1.5 MAXINE ELLIOTT'S THEATRE. 39th E. of Broadway. LO. 5-0668 TONIGHT f0 53c to $2.20 "IT'S SUPERB!" A THEATRE GUILD PRODUCTION Farrell.

Wnrld-Telrornm luTiinrWcc GERTRUDE LAWRENCE dn, nlLUtnntJO in a musical play rt with HARRY CAREY I ADYIN THE DARK BUILD 124 W. B.i,. 4 wl Only lu 1 Ut.Thuri.a..t..$l.5.SS4 ALVIN. 52 W. of "'way.

CIrtl. 8-RKR8 1Z IT Evt, 1:35. M.tl. w. an.

Sit. 11.10 12.75 MATS. TOM'W and J.JJJ mail orders filled "Bohhy Clark la funnlir than a Brooki Atkinson. Time, J. C.

ILE tkinnn. Timet rwKr tffiEiSS Li FE WITH FATHER Al.LiAltlV wltn Howard LINDSAY, Dorothy STICKNEY IT Mm ADIT 1 I IVt EMIPRE. B'way A 40 St. 269 Roati at 11.10 L.L, men ARt AL1M Evening 8:40. Mali.

Wrd. and Sat. HUDSON THEA. of way. "80 tunny nona ot no will tret MATS TOM'W WFn 2:40 forift It." AtHrtnlotl, N.

Y. Times "1 LU. Eyos )M Howard Lindoay and Ruaael Crouae presnnt 'EARTHQUAKE OF LAUGHTER'. arotm, Pott ARSENIC AND OLD LACE MY SISTER EILEEN A New Comerfy by iosevh Keuelrine THE RIOTOUS I.AUr.H HIT with Borll Kirlott Joioihlna Hull SILTMORE ThM 47th St. W.

ot y. CI. I S353 loan Adair 0 John AKxonifrr a Clinton Sundbora ULTON, W. 4(1 St, Evi.8:4n. Mats.

Wod. and Sat. mail orders promptly filled 2 Perfi. Today afcVti. 4W, ml 1 lU-sFOioU TONIf.HT I "eoular prices DAI 0 Boolc i union i lt0 (runi( fAt i John o'haka Ronr.KRS and HART Bongs with VIVIENNE SEGAL a GEORGE TAPPS 3 TOM WED.

and SAT. HUBERT CI.0-5MOI "A hont- tor your tnon.T." Wlnchell caa't" enow a nn Mat'- T0M SAT" i.T EST FOOT FORWARD b. i. D.syiv. r-Tiirr mfrman With ROSEMARY LANE J18" Book by John Cooll Holm DANAMA HATTIE Jlfuofe 7.ric bv Huih Martin A Ralph Blono I 1 1 A BARRYMORE.47 8I.W.OIB CI.I-0390.

Ew.0 :40 COLE PORTER Sotlgi 3 MATS TOM'W WF0 and Sat. hr HERBERT FIELDS ond B. B. DoSYLVA JlimiO. wJk lUUI 2.4( 4TH wa.

JOHN GOLDEN present CI A II Is I A A fmo "A Mastnrploff" Atlriruon, N. Y. Timet Lhi ETHEL BARRYMORE BOOTH THEATRE.45th8t..w.ol B'aoy. EI40 LI CORN IS GREEN TONIGHT 55C lO S3.30!"TALETHE..45t"St.W..fB"". Clr.5-S70 Em.

Matlnrra WED. and :40 Wr On. hant." Man fir, Neirs "Hllarlnuo fitn." Snhnl Jnurnri American i 3 MATS. -k TOM'W, WED. MATS.

BROCf PEMPEPTON vresrnt "Cmall and admlratlo drama" Atklnson.Tlmr fUCKOOS ON THE HEARTH win k'f A Corned bv PARKER W. fENNELlY 1 nC PIf7r rtlrerted by ANTOINETTE PERRY hv FREDERICK HAZLITT PPtENNAN MOROSCO THEATRE. 4Mh St. CI. -Still Wit.

EDMUND GWENN 2n(. t.J.-m,t. i.m-'.3o Plymouth 45 St. w. B.

et. s.iisa. rem. loar EVO. Hl.tn-m no Good Srata All Parfa.

Em. SI. 1(1 ss so 1 Parts. Tom'w Matlnro SO, Et(. OIin4Jorinon orViii.WfMi!rSfoppin Th Blf Aouamoolral at a TOPI ellz a poppin 4th Viva o'brieni I I 0 1 way A St.

Vf A In Pnortea Scf na a and Ona Swlmmlnr Pool Eti. 8:30, II.I0.M.3S, onooat Sat. afcAft MARIE VICTORIA MILTON 2P.r(. 1 DM BROWN NASH CORDOVA WATSON rem. loday: 3 8:40 P.M.

the diamond roys EXTRA HOLIDAY MAT. TOMORROW, 2:40 and PETE DESJARDINS Twlre Olymltln Champion DIvar "A CREAT SHOW" HerM Tribune MAirsTIO St. CI. 8-0730 Ew.8:30 50c, $1 and $1.50 5JuhVh.5 2.7. SECOND EDITION of the "Movlni and lioaiitltul Her.

Mb. Jlonsatlnnnl Milolral Irtravatnza LILLIAN HELLM AN'S New Plev JTHappensonice Watch on the rhine at Amnlri'a Onl Ire Thfatra with I.UCII.E PAUL MADT Cootor Th.otro, Rorkolollor Cootor. CO. B-8474 WATSON I.UKAS CHRISTIANS t. oiront Mon.

Moti. Todoy, Wod. and Sot. MARTIN BECK. 4SthBt.

W. ot Avo. Clr.8-WJ A tor Evory too. IVS. AT 8:40 Era.

8:40, Mstlnaaa WED. and SAT. .8:40 HE GETS MAD, TOO Henry Armetta, screen comedian, is a featured artist cn the Brooklyn Strand's stage this weekend, sharing the spotlight with Louis Prima, his trumpet and his orchestra. RONA AND CLIFF THAELL, featured in the skating cast of Was one year old at the Center Theater last Friday and gave.

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About The Brooklyn Daily Eagle Archive

Pages Available:
1,426,564
Years Available:
1841-1963