The Brooklyn Daily Eagle from Brooklyn, New York • Page 47

PLAYTHINGS Gladys George Made Her Hit, Had to Run Pemberton Had to Keep 'Lady in Waiting' Waiting Until He Got His Star Back ItCTION I Or THI BROOKLYN rGlC TJD XT 1TT) SUNDAY, MAY 12, 1940 JLf i -L I I 3 I ft 111' iv, it Mi 11 I I It i 1 It- 1 is iiiw i i i 15 JtjJ What Has Become of the Audiences for Plays Like 'Ogt From Under' and 'The Strangler Fig Which Mean No Harm By ARTH1H POLLOCK A the year roll byV becomes harded for play like "Out from TJnder" and "The Strangler Tig." newest of the newcomer Manhattan stages, to get anywhere at all. Nobody seem to love them any more. Or at least they are loved ardently, plays of this kind, by very Shortly after Brock. Pemberton presented "Personal Appearance" with Gladys George at Henry Miller's Theater and that comedy became the reigning hit ot New York, he wrote rather prophetically that he would never have produced that play without Gladys George. How essential the glamorous and exciting Gladys George was to prove, in the life not only' of that play but of a more recent one, Is one of those rare and un- I tured and refined circumstances.

The entire story of "The Nutmeg Tree" was the story of the daughter's impending marriage and Julia's visit to her at the home of the foster parents. However, when Brock Pemberton determined to produce the play am wired Gladys George, asking hir to play Julia, he discovered tiat the little lady who had mad such a success as the Hollywoo( actress in "Personal Appearance" was now herself a great Hollywood actress. There were contracts and agents and 3.000 miles. Brock Pemberton waited. He waited all last season.

There were promises and the promises A fr I it-''Mv few of the people who go to the theater. It Is likely, however, that they are still to the taste of thousands who do not go to the theater -any longer. Certainly when they appear thousands upon thousands do not eo to see them. Why Li this? Probably these thousands are perfectly satisfied to go to the movies. There, they see unfolded stories of the same or similar quality, stories that appeal to the patron In the same way and by the same means.

Entertainments of this type Used to be popular In the theaters. Now they can be seen on the screen and It costs less to see them. It is no use to blame It all on the critics. When "Out from Under" came along it had not a friend in the world among the critics. It was the same way with "The Strangler Fig." Critics hold that the theater is a place for something of a little higher type.

The theater did not used to be. Plays like "Out from Under" once found the theater a happy place to live in. It is not the critics who have driven such plays out Into the storm. They have merely become used to better things and refuse any longer to esteem the elementary forms of entertainment. It Is the audiences who have killed the poor things.

Not Special To succeed in the theater now it Is necessary for the playwright to bring something fresh to it, novel twists, novel treatments if he cares only to succeed by amusing or startling, something imaginative or cogently thoughtful If he has higher aims. Only the plays that are special in one way or another get along today. "Out from Under" is not special. It contains a good idea for a comedy, but the treatment the author gives it makes it not special at all. He is too easily satisfied, to eager to get laughs at any price.

For Instance, as we watch the play we are supposed to laugh when a woman appears In a dress that displays a good half of her bark. The other characters pretend to be startled, make jokes and other references to her and her apparel. Unfortunately jokes about backs are no longer funny nor piquant. We have become accustomed to womens' having backs. Some of our best friends have backs.

Who cares? You may say that New York is, after all, a small town and that the people in it are like anybody else, but they just do not laugh at Jokes about backs. Anyhow the dress is not in the least daring. You would think a play could be amusing when it has as hero mild, stay-at-home small-town newspaper editor who in secret writes a book in which he imagines himself running away from his stuffy wife and the humdrum life he leads and finding adventure In the South Seas. You would think it could be amusing when the novel becomes a best seller and his prosaic wife, reading it, and never dreaming he wrote it, is thrilled by it and inspired to run away from her stuffy husband and the fiumdrum life she leads with him. That could be very funny if the playwright were content to play with the ironies of the notion and could do so with some degree of literary delicacy.

Instead he makes his people obvious at every turn, gets his climaxes by having the girl with the low back taunt the placid husband until he rushes her out to a road house for drinks. That today Is pure corn. It was good in the days when the term "cave man" was new. And because he goes out and sows a couple of wild oats and his wife discovers that he is enormously thrilling after all. It just happens that we have seen that too often.

It does not amuse any more. Thousands Left Probably thousands of people have not yet grown tired of that kind of fun, even though they have seen it over and over again on 1 the screen. That may be why there are double features. For such people "Out from Under" can still be fresh. The trouble is, from the point of view of this play as a piece of theatrical properly, that they will probably never hear about it.

They will go on depending upon the movies exclusively for exhibitions of this caliber. "The Strangler Fig" Is even less cleverly managed. Here we have a mystery play that depends for its enlivening characteristics on a series of murders committed while a group of people is gathered together for the purpose of solving the mystery of a murder committed seven years before. It is like dozens of other murder plays except for the fact that mention is often made of a tropical vine 4M twitX' t.Jmm usual sagas in show business. Gladys George, star of "Lady in Waiting," Brock Pemberton's newest comedy at the Martin Beck Theater, seems so difficult to replace that she caused the aforementioned producer to wait two and a half years to bring "Lady in Waiting" to Broadway.

In trying to analyze Miss George's gifts it Is necessary to verret among the yellowed souvenirs of "Personal Appearance." Although the notices on that play were unmitigated raves and the play was hailed as "uproariously funny," there emerged a new figure upon tht theatrical horizon. Gladys George, a native of Hatton, Maine, not far from the rock-ledged cliffs above Portland, came to Manhattan as a fugitive from the disintegrating stock companies. Not many of our time remember that some years back there travelled across the land valiant and sometimes prosperous bands of players frequently headed by what were known iu the old stock days as favorites. Just such a stock fa vorite was the father of Gladys George, Sir Arthur Claire, noted Shakespearean actor. Miss George's mother was the leading lady.

By the time Gladys George was 15 years of age, she had toured every State of the union. But the Orpheum Circuit and the Chautauqua were hardly the limits of Gladys George's ambition. Dearly as she loved her parents, and deeply as she may have wished to pursue the path they had so faithfully worn through the years, it was Broadway that beckoned the exotic blond bombshell. Slightly under five foot three Inches, weighing little more than 100 pounds, Gladys George arrived in New York and besought the cold managers with all the charm in her hazel eyes. Little though she suspected it at the time, she possessed two qualities that were to make her famous.

One was a rather startling candor usually expressed in a husky Voice. The other was an Inextinguishable sense of humor. Gladys George's first opportunity to exhibit any or all of her acting talents occurred in a shortlived play called "Queer People." Queer as the people in the play may have been, it provided Gladys George with a straight bit in which she was seen by Brock Pemberton iui uic nisi nine. nine were several other plays, and her stage patience might have been exhausted had not she been the daughter of an English gentleman, a man whose stole theatrical training had Included four years with Sir Henry Irving. It was on a certain memorable day early in the Fall of 1934 that Gladys George received a telegram from Brock Pemberton, requesting an audition.

It seemed that Mr. Pemberton had a play he thought she would be right for. It would be very nice to say that "Personal Appearance" was produced without a hitch and became an instant success. There were many hitches. Describing it later, Brock Pemberton confessed that he had considerable difficulty in persuading not only those finan cially interested but the owner of the theater that he had a great comedy and a great actress to play It.

Day by day, however, as Gladys George was seen around the theater at rehearsals, her indefinable personality, a certain exciting quality, made itself felt to all concerned. Even the house manager at Henry Miller's Theater re marked during the second day's rehearsal: "She looks good to me. She looks good to me." At the close of the Broadway mn and tour in this hit, Gladys George departed for Hollywood. During the interim, Brock Pember ton produced a number of plays on Broadway, notable among which was "Kiss the Boys Good bye" last season. Several year's ago, however, he read a slender little novel called "The Nutmeg Tree." In this novel, written by an English authoress, Margery Sharp, there was the character of Julia.

Somehow Julia was Gladys George. Julia was a war mother whose husband, a titled Englishman, was killed in action. There was nothing very distin guished about Julia (in the book) except that she had an irrepres sible personality, blonde hair, flash lug eyes and a tremendous love of life too much of a love of life for the family of her English husband, killed in action! For this reason the daughter had been adopted and raised In very cul- i GEORGE COHAN He comes back to the New York stage tomorrow evening at the I i in i i i I The Tavern," in which he starred years ago. I Turn or Tne vaqaDona. a sequel, rrom nib own nuiiu, iu I a were broken.

Last Spring, when Brock Pemberton went West to visit one of the touring companies of "Kiss the Boys Goodbye" a final promise was made on the part of Gladys George to come East and be Julia, but again this proved impossible. Not until almost the close of the theatrical season this year was it possible for her to return to a theater, within one block of Henry Miller's, wherein she had made her first personal triumph, to play in "The Nutmeg Tree." By this time even the title of the play had been changed and had become "Lady in Waiting." From this background it must be evident that not only Brock Pemberton but the theater-going public recognized in Gladys Georse certain indescribable values. Comparison of the two Gladys George roles on Broadway is interesting In "Personal Appea ranee" Glad George was a motion picture star whose love for life and adventure was a menace to the studio she represented. So great was her irresponsibility as a female that whenever she was travelling abroad a atchdog was sent with her. In "Lady in Waiting" Gladys George portrays a woman torn between hci own self interest and the welfare of her beautiful though priggish daughter.

There is no watchdog in "Lady in Waiting," and Gladys George, though trav elling as a prim and proper mother, finds it impossible to resist a team of acrobats whom she chances to meet on a Channel crossing. In "Personal Appearance" Gladys George, as Carole Arden, was torn between a career and a boy and only the phony ruse of her watch- 1 dog prevented her from eloping with a filling station clerk. In LAtty in waitine Uladvs Georee comes to visit her daughter In the midst of culture and refinement, but is pursued there by her sins on shipboard in the form of one of the flying Genocchlos. In both of these hit comedies Gladys George has been beautiful, less of the temptor than the tempt ed, but always a bit of both, a woman whosesins were so human that they were lovable, almost endearing. In a sense she was a blonde gypsy, a vagabond, concealing her true heart in a welter of pleasantries with occasional stabbing moments of the ridiculous or the sublime.

From this it may be evident that such parts as Carole Arden and Julia Packett, in "Personal Appearance" and in the newest, "Lady in Waiting," are not for Katharine Cornell, Helen Hayes or Gertrude Lawrence. They belong as the seemingly inherited prerogative to only one actress in America today. That actress is Gladys George. Brock Pemberton discovered her, and having discovered her, patiently waited two years for her return to Broadway. Flatbush Arts Theater To Present Two Plays The Flatbush Arts Theater will present an evening of two prize winning one-act plays, "Plant in the Sun," by Ben Bengal, and "Liie in a Day of a Secretary," by Alfred Hayes and George Kleinsinger, Saturday evening, May 18, at 8:40 p.m.

at the Theater of the New School for Social Research. The same program will be repeated Sunday evening, May 19. Red Hook Players As their first co-operative venture, the Red Hook Players, a new community drama group of the Red Hook Housing Project and surrounding neighborhood, will present Irwin Shaw's success of three years ago, "Bury the Dead," and the Henry Street Co-operative Theater tne Henry Street Settlement House as guest performers, in Thornton Wilder's "Happy Journey" on the evenings of May 17, 18 and 19 at the Red Hook Community Center, 110 W. 9th Brooklyn. When Shirley Ross Met Messrs.

R. and H. She Went to Work in the Movies and Now She's in Their 'Higher and Higher' that can wind itself about a man and not only kill him but so conceal him that he disappears entirely. To this is added frequent mention of Haitian voodoo. These new elements are counted on to make National Theater in 'The Re- fit at the Beverly-Wilshire.

A trlpld play that some day may be famous as the historical "Tinker to Evers to Chance," because it was at the last named hostelry that sh met our' own Rodgers and Hart. The boys were on the payroll, but that didn't mean they were working. On the contrary, seemed to be getting nowhere last, and they decided to do something about overcoming this inertia. Accordingly, Shirley was drafted si chief overcomcr. They taught her a new son? called "Prayer," and arranged to have her and it screen-testcd simultaneously.

But what a test! They even went to the expense of engaging a special director, feathers and furs for Ross, and an elaborate set mounted on an Imposing curved stairway. Th result exceeded their wildest expectations. The rights to the song were snapped up immediately. Rodgers and Hart were assigned to a shooting script, and La Ross got a long-term contract. Somebody even took an option on the This "Higher and Higher" hoopla which Dwight Deere Wiman is presenting at the Shubert Theater seems to be practically up to its second act first appearance on the musical boards in almost a decade; Marta Eggert's definite debut in New York, and Shirley Ross' "The Strangler Fig" different from all other mystery melodramas and to delight us.

They are far from sufficient. Mystery melodramas will always depend for their effectiveness on the skill with whlrh they are contrived. This one is clumsy in the extreme. The characters are sticks. Their actions are striking in no way save that they are more than ordinarily ridiculous.

Mr. Homolka Is Austrian When the slow-moving melodrama "Grey Farm" opened recently at the Hudson Theater, Oscar Homolka, who made his American debut in It, was described In these pages as a German actor, and ft very good actor, too. Mr. Homolka Is Instead an Austrian, and a very good actor, too. in "firsts." It's Jack Haley's the last named lady served number the R.

S. claimed it. Finally, after three weeks, all she had left In her repertoire was "In a Little Blue Cunoe," and'eTen Shirley knew she couldn't get very' far in that. She quit! From Harris she went to Carlos Molina's rhuniba band at the Roosevelt Hotel, and from there she Jumped to Gus Arnheim's out steln and Howard Bay with a testimonial party at Cafe Society this Sunday afternoon. In addition to, the regular Cafe Society entertainment, Blitxstein and Robinson will perform.

Olivier and the lard Old Pals Laurence Olivier, currently scaling a balcony at the 51st St. Theater every evening as Romeo to the Juliet of Vivien Leigh In Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet," has never before been seen as the boldest of the Montagues in this country. As a matter of fact, all of his previous appearances here were made in modern roles, roles without even a suspicion of blank verse in them. Olivier first faced an American audience as a young playwright in "Murder on the Second Floor" a decade ago, subsequently appeared here in "Private Lives," "The Green Bay Tree," and as Katharine Cornell's husband (another playwright) in "No Time for Comedy." But although, his roles on this side of the Atlantic have had nothing to do with Shakespeare, Olivier is far from being a stranger to-the Bard. In 1935, for example, af, London's New Theater, Olivier and John Gielgud played an engagement of "Romeo and Juliet" in which they kept switching back and forth between the roles of Romeo and Mer-cutio.

One week it would be Gielgud who would be swearing by the inconstant moon, Olivier who would be dying from a wound that was "not so deep as a well" and uie following week their positions would be reversed. Peggy Ashcroft was the Juliet in that production, and Edith Evans was the Nurse. There is no way of telling how Miss Ash-croft's nerves held up under the strain of seeing two different Romeos popping up under her balcony on successive weeks but at any rate, the production was a tremendous success. That was far from being Olivier's only tilt with Shakespeare. At the celebrated Old Vic, for instance, he spent two years in repertory, playing such roles as Hamlet, Macbeth, Coriolanus, Sir Toby Belch in "Twelth Night" and Iago in "Othello." Alo, during that span, he took a trip up to Denmark with Vivien Leigh, to play Hamlet to her Ophelia at Elsinore itself, the very scene of "Hamlet." Motion pictures? Well, he was Healhcliffe in "Wuthering Heights" and Max rie Winter in "Rehw-ra" that's about all that has to be laid.

I initial leap from the lenses. brief sentence swirling around the personal appearance circuit, as well as a fortnight or so in a California carbon copy. But to concentrate on Shirley for a second. The first nine years of her life are shrouded in the eternal mystery that always hangs over anybody with a natal point like Omaha, Neb. Her parents, however, eventually saw the error of their ways and proceeded to rectify the blunder by truckln' on down and out of there.

They hitched up a trailer to the family sedan and headed West. They eventually wound up in Long Beach, and that spot was so delightfully different from Nebraska that they decided to stay. Two years convinced them that they had found the right church but the wrong pew. So they moved up theoast a few miles and came to rest in of all places Hollywood, remember? And It's in that retiring little hamlet that our story really begins. Then came the well-known switcheroo.

By some hocus-pocus she landed in one or Sid Granulan elaborate stage presentations which at that time always accompanied the feature picture at the Theater. She pestered Graunian so much about a singing role that finally, in desperation, he sent her over to Phil Harris, who was leading his band at the Cocoanut Grove. Harris, of course, already had one songstress. He didn't need another, and if he had, he wouldn't have picked that spindly-legged, saucer- eyed, 18-year-old. But the re- doubtable Sid owned 50 percent of the Grove, and Harris, accustomed 1 to the workings of the old Holly- wood hierarchy, thought she was a relative, or at lenst a stockholder's daughter.

Accordingly, on the payroll she wput bu' no! fnr long. The resular mincer saw to that. i Whenever Shirley pickei good, True, Honoring Winners rheater Arts Committee will honor three of its members who were Just honored by Guggenheim wards Earl Robinson, Marc Blitis- LFRED LUNT and Lynn if p'ay, "There Shall Be No THE NEW PLAYS Monday "Hie Return of the Vagabond," by George M. Cohan, with Mr. Colian as the star.

At the National Theater. In the cast are McKay Morris, Celeste Holme, Gretchen Davidson, Florenz Ames, E. J. Blunkall. Benefits Tonight "Separate Rooms" at the Mansfield Theater for the Stage Relief Fund.

"Margin for Error," at the Majestic Theater for the Actors' Fund. ESTELLE WINWOOD, Flora Robson and Jessamine New-combe in "Ladies in Retirement," the mystery melodroma o4 Fonranne in Robert Sherwood Night," ot the Alvin Theater Henry Miller's Theater..