The Brooklyn Daily Eagle from Brooklyn, New York • Page 29

BROOKLYN EAGLE, APR. 25, 1948 29 OFF STAGE By George Currie On the Screen rrx BEATRICE LILLIE, in U. S. which opens at ithe Century Theater next Friday evening. Jack Haley is also starred.

ARTHUR MARGETSON, Louis Calhem and Foye Emerson in Ferenc Molnar's "The Play's the Thing," which revives itself next Wednesday at the Booth Theater. Ambition Comes to Town, With Faye Emerson With many of Hollywood's brightest stars flirting with the idea of appearing in the legitimate theater, Faye Emerson is one of the movie actresses who is doing something about ap Ballet Theater Heads Week on the Stage Theater slacked off during the past week. New Stages, at 159 Bleecker put on "To Tell You the Truth," a whimsy by Eva Wolas, last Sunday night. To be sure, some of the dialogue in this play was bright. Some of it was dull It concerned a conceited Father Adam's loss of his rib and a girl who straightway became Eve in the Garden of Eden.

Father Adam was Anthony Randall. Mother Eve was Jean Gillespie. They strove manfully, and one should add, womanly, through a thin script. The laughs were there, but often far apart. In brief, the pace was slow.

A quickening of the dialogue and certainly a little more action could have made of this play something exciting and worth a larger audience. Eve's taking over of the house plans in the cave and hoping that Adam would get sick, so she could nurse him, were comical enough. Her discovery of the facts of life was cutely beguiling. Miss Gillespie was enough to beguile anybody. The introduction of a red rubber ice pack for Adam's headache and the tea wagon and bottles of champagne in ice buckets, however, clashed with all our preconceived ideas of Creation.

Adam and Eve were too slick, in this production. Even Adam's roll, on which he kept the names he had given the animals upon the earth, seemed like something in a promotion manager's office. The play has its good sides. And one should bear in mind that the New Stages, is offering an outlet for genius unlikely to hit Broadway. The chances are that this bit won't go uptown.

But a good scouring with production soap might ready it, at that. Another offering was Elizabeth Bergner in "The Cup of Trembling" at the Music Box. This concerned the evils of strong drink. Most agree that over indulgence is bad. Miss Bergner was deep in over indulgence.

For six scenes of the eight in the two-act play, she was superb. Then came psychoanalysis in a most obvious manner and the play wound up with a tedious lecture about Alcoholics Anonymous, an excellent institution but hardly a matter for the stage as done thusly. Perhaps the best way to describe this play would be that Miss Bergner holds all the attention until near the end, when Miss Arlene Francis takes over to talk her temperance monologue. The overshadowing memories of the father With hairy hands and the man in the gray coat in the taxi-cab are not iiite enough to hold suspense, even with the accomplished Bergner. The play goes from scene to scene and act to act, each piling upon the other.

Miss Bergner keeps getting drunker and drunker until her reformation, which follows inevitably as the result of a problem Involving water and sulphuric acid in a test tube. This should be a case history, rather than a drama. The play is linical. Truly laboratory. The result indicated from the beginning.

And that doesn't make theater. The other piece of the past week was Agnes DeMille's choreography based upon the Lizzie "Borden trial and, naturally, what led up to it. This bowed in at the Metropolitan Opera House with considerable acclaim. Brutal would be the word to describe the action. Ax murders are never amusing.

But Alicia Alonso, as Lizzie, brought pathos to leaven murder and frustration to ameliorate high crime and misdemeanor. She was gracefully grand in her acquittal. There has been some talk about Miss DeMille's musical comedy chorus. This should quiet down, upon a reconsideration of the revival meeting, which was dignified and convincing. And appropriate to the story.

All understood Lizzie's yearning to be accepted by her kind and age--and there was ground for a moving defense of her crime in the ugly mood of her stepmother. The stepmother, by the way, was Muriel Bentley, who doubled in the following number, "Gala Performance," 'a rollicking piece. The theater had to turn to the ballet, last week, for whatever distinction it had. the coming week has a more prolific offering, but as to quality only time will tell. Murder Dished Up in Three Styles In 'Big 'October Man 'Guilt' No matter how they like their homicide dished up whether fast and polished, cozy and home-like or dipped in abnormal psychology the murder mystery fans should be happy these days.

They are being taken care of handsomely. Within the last week or so, our town has seen the arrival of three spine-tinglers from separate points on the globe. All of them are superior products for one reason or another and they're all entirely different. To get right down to case histories, the three are "The Big Clock," a Hollywood product at the N. Y.

Paramount; England's "The October Man" at the Bijou, and France's "Without Guilt" at the Little Met. Taken individually and each one is worth taking in they are simply entertainment fare of varying quality and appeal. But, lumped together, they form a significant pattern, because they deal with the same basic subject and yet are so different in treatment. Opening close together as they did, each one throws the other's individual qualities into high relief. One is this way because it's an American movie; another, because it's English, and the third, because it's French.

In other words, the three pictures throw considerable light on the countries of their origin, even though made and intended as pure entertainment, as pure escapism. Let's take "The Big Clock" as a starter, and it deserves to come first. On the basis of entertainment and brilliant ingenuity, it is an outstanding achievement. At any rate, it's my belief that a stranger to this country could learn quite a bit about America from the Paramount film, not the whole story about America, nor even the most important part of it. But he could learn a good deal about our more spectacular features.

The tempo of America's biggest cities, for instance. No country that dawdled or believed in afternoon siestas for businessmen could turn out a breathless work like "The Big Clock." Even the title is significant. It indicates the timetable awareness that rules big city life, especially among the successful. And this Imaginary stranger could learn even more from the brilliant way in which the movie was put together every nut, bolt and screw inecisely in place, well-oiled, polished, everything functioning together like a high-powered piece of machinery. The stranger would know that America had a genius for engineering.

Going from "Clock" to "The October Man" the stranger would find was like changing from a hurtling express train to an ambling horse wagon. Not that "October Man" is without tension or excitement. But it takes its time about it, building up to it gradually before turning into a hare-andliound chase. Instead of sketching its characters or background on the wing, it gives careful, detailed, if surface, portraits of its people and paints a meticulous picture of their surroundings. Even though murder is concerned, you have the reserved English temperament on parade here, the placid way they have of doing things.

The murder seems to be resented more as a breach of good manners than of morality. There's talk of danger, what with the murderer still being free, but the frightened ones are some timid, elderly ladies. The other characters take it pretty much In their stride. "October Man" is concerned with giving a realistic air to its melodramatic doings, not to glamorize them, and it does a first-rate job. Finally, we come to "Not Guilty," which Is not interested in a whirligig of action or surface naturalism, but what lies underneath reality.

The French movie is concerned with the why and wherefore, with the psychology of a riminal. What makes a murderer tick? the film asks, and then proceeds to show us a doctor who is ripe for murder. Once a popular and successful doctor, he is losing his patients through drunkenness. Tormented by feelings of inadequacy and aware that he has failed to live up to his early promise, ho needs something to give him a feeling of power, of efficiency, and he finds his unhappy solution In murder. It's a one-man picture and Michel Simon does an excellent job of it.

fit By Lew Sheaffer cliclnt let Miss Beavers do the cooking in the first place. "Well, in the first place," he answered, "it would take too much time in the scene, and second, although Miss Beavers 'has played a maid in over 100 pictures, SHE CAN'T COOK!" Another Harvey, Jack Buchanan Jack Buchanan recently ar- iriveu in oik tor a short yjj ami bad no intention of appearing on the American -taw at this time. However. pearing on the live stage. The actress will appear as leading lady with Louis Calhern in "The Play's the Thing," the Ferenc Molnar comedy which opens at the Booth Theater next Wednesday.

She has been starring in one motion picture after another. She kept her eye on the Broadway scene and read hundreds of play scripts. When the producers of "The Play's the Thing," Gilbert Miller, James Russo and Michael Ellis, ere seeking a glamorous actress to portray the role of the prima 'donna, they contacted Faye Emerson as a logical choice for the leading feminine role. Here was an actress who had played more glamour parts than any other type in her 30-odd movies but whose heart was in the "legit." She has been seen in such Hollywood charades as "Hotel Berlin," "The Mask of Dimitrios," "Uncertain Glory," "Outward Bound-' and "Nobody Lives Forever." But with all her picture work, the actress could not shake off the thrill of theater which entered her blood when she had her first acting experience behind HANNAH ROVINA as Leah, in "The Dybbuk," with Habimah at the Broadway Theater, beginning next Saturday night. This company will act in the Hebraic.

New Plays VFIKSI.Y T11K PLAY'S TIIK THING." a revival of the Ferenc Molnar comedy in the P. C. Wode-hoiise adaptation. At the Booth Theater. Starring is Louis Calhern.

Gilbert Miller directed the cast which includes Faye Emerson, Arthur Margetson, Claude Allister, Richard Ilylton, Ernest Cos-sart and Francis Compton. Ralph Alswang did the lighting. il A JNSIHK S. A at the Century a 1 A il Schwartz presents Beatrice Lillie and Haley in a musical review, with sketches by Moss Hart. Arnold 15.

Horwitt and Arnold Auerbach. 'Inside U. S. Offers Such As Bea Lillie and Jack Haley "Inside U. S.

which comes to the Century Theater next Friday with Beatrice Lillie and Jack Haley as stars, was born in California, where Arthur Schwartz was producing pictures. The urge to do a musical Americana was so great that he BILLIE HOLLIDAY, jazz virtuoso, who will put on a program of her songs at the Mansfield Theater for a week, starting next Wednesday night. Ballet Society in Public A series of four performances by the fifty dancers of Ballet Society stars next Thursday night and continues through Saturday at City Center. Under the direction of George Balan- cliinc Ballet Society has been producing for its Whitmore Went to War to Win Priied Antoinette Perry Award James Whitmore, recipient of an Antoinette Perry Award for a "distinguished performance by a newcomer" for his role In "Command Decision." justifies the American Theatre Wing's laboratory for ambitious service men. Whitmore was a student at "mv.

me 'S The Cook Wasn't There When It Came to Cooking Never let it be said that mo-ard were ready with anothei tioii picture property men are Lot plaie of same. Tile camera not talented. would turn and Miss Beavers When "Mr. Blaiulings Build-: ould do the serving just as His Dream House." comedy hirn she'd cooked it herself, at the Astor, was in Richard was asked why they Yale when war broke out. He had played on the Yale fool ball guard duty on the Isthmus of team but did not win his letter, Panama until he was discharged because buckling knees kept from the corps in March, 11) 10.

him out of the Harvard of service, he wormed his Prineetdn games. He enlisted in way into the cast of a U. S. O. the Marine Corps in '12 andunit playing "The Milky Way." trained at Parris Island and a unit that strangely enough decided to come to Broadway to launch the show via an automobile trek across the country so he could see it at first hand the villages, the national parks.

the wheal and cattle countries, etc. important One of his stops was Jackson Hole, -till real cowbov country. So (impressed was Schwartz with what he saw here that one of the big song numbers of the show. "My Gal Is Mine Once More," is set on Jackson Hole. Continuing his journey, Schwartz made hundreds of stops, making notes, jotting down tunes for future use.

Upon his arrival in New York he discussed his idea with How ard Dietz, with whom he had footlights with an amateur company in San Diego. Miss Emerson continued her young acting career when she joined the Carmel Players on the West Coast. They called themselves by the impressive title of St. James Repertory Company. They were real professionals.

They paid her $13 a week. For the "money isn't everything" theorists, let it be noted that after hitting the Hollywood jackpot, Faye Emerson shook the Hollywood dust from her pretty heels, forsaking lucrative motion picture contracts to appear in some of the country's topflight Summer theaters. Interviewed in Washington the other day where the play is being tried out, she said, "What a wonderful cast I have to work with Louis Calhern in the role that Holbrook Blinn originated, Arthur Margetson, Ernest Gossan and Claud Allister. This is the kind of production I dreamed about between 'takes' on so many Hollywood sets. Now it has come true." She wants to act, and not on a screen and sound track.

od to produce. He saw Gun ther the next day and Gunther excited himself by the prospec of a revue suggested by his k. then onlv on the book helves a few week-, consented to the Use of the tit It and any material. In two acts and 2" scenes. "In.side U.

S. in sketch and dance, affords a geographic sweep of the country. Among the sketch backgrounds are Chillicothe. Ohio: Miami. and New York City.

The skits, incidentally, stem from the pens of such wits as Arnold Auerbach, Moss Hart and Arnold B. Horwitt. The songs, too, span the nation in their settings. "Rhode Island Is Famous for You" is single member of the com- pany. They all draw the same 'salaries.

Band Leader Writes Show Phil Engallis, orchestra con ductor for "Angel in the Wings," has completed the lyrics and music for a new-show entitled "Bird in a Gilded Cage," and wants Beatrice Kay to star in it. based on the John Gunther Paul Richard and Max book cjf the same title. Musiejprop men, were given the foils bv Mr. Schwartz and lyricsllowing orders one day: "Be on did nne hospitals, Whitmore was sent to the Pacific to play at Saipan, Tinian and other oases where our hero had fought with the marines. Returning to America in October, '40, Whitmore entered the American Theater Wing's professional training program.

Kermit Bloomgarden. producer for the paM two years. The City ('finer series marks the first public appearance of the dance company. Five of Ralanciiine's ballet are featured in the of six to be rotated in repertory for the four performances. Included will be Igor Stravinsky's newly commissioned "Orpheus," which has its world premiere Wednesday night for Ballet Society's subscribers at the Center.

Two other recent Stravinsky scores, "Renard" and are included in the repertory. Also on the schedule will be Bizet's "Symphony in and Mozart's "Symphonie Concertantc," both with choreography by Balan-chine and Fred Danieli's "Punch and the Child" with music by Richard Arnell. by Howard Dietz. Robert H. Gordon directed.

The cast also includes John Tyers, Valerie Bettis, Estelle Loring, Eric Victor, Mann, Lewis Nye, Herb Shriner, Law- Ouantico. He progressed through Officers Training School to win commission as a second looey. After further training at Camp Pendelton, he was sent to Hawaii as a replacement and joined the 4th Divi-Fion at Saipan in July, 1914. While on Tinian, he came down the set at 8 a.m., prepared to furnish hot coffee, ham and eggs and various and other sun dry items pertaining to break fast. The scene: Breakfast se- quencc with Cary Grant.

ML Uj IH-1I111U IIIU IJItitll- AMI II 'l "vtl which i-ouise ihmv eis, as the main, was to pre- sine. ne two nroi) an, aprons, carved thick men, rence, art Reiner. Kohhv i.Myrna I otmie White, Albert Popwell. Wil-jSharyn Moffett, Louise Beav-liam LoMassena and Nellie'ers." Hill. Lemuel Ayrcs did thej ami Miller were sets.

Jay Blackton is musical, there at a.m A kitchen was with amoebic dysentery and of "Command Decision, was was sent on a Cook's Tour of casting the William' Wister hospitals that included Newi Haines play at the time he was Caledonia, Oakland. San instructing for the Wing. Whit-Diego. St. Albans, N.

more was an obvious choice for and Harriman, N. Y. the role of Sergeant Evans and Finally discharged from got the job. miivji. STl'RIV 'TI1E DYBBUK" bv llKkV lirst in a repertory which m- remhei.u,n hearti collaborated on such memor-jcentered in Providence.

"First able successes as "Three's a Prize at the Fair" is evolved Crowd," "The Bandwagon" and around a picturesque State fair "At Home Abroad." Dietz was in Wisconsin. The scenic motif equally enthusiastic and the! for "Blue Grass" is the Ken-two were again reunited. jtiicky Derby at. Churchill Meanwhile Schwartz was dig-IDowns. "Haunted Heart" is ging for a title and was and danced against a denly confronted by a Iwok in background of a San Francisco a friend's home that electrified waterfront.

"Come. Oh, him. It was John Cumber's is a song in praise of the "fair" "Inside U. S. Here was the ity of Pittsburgh.

The title. ful March Gras held annually He was more excited whenjat fabulous New Orleans is re-he read the book, for here, in in music and rhyme essence, was the show he want-'for "At the March Gras." chicles "David's Crown," "Thejslieos of ham, brewed coffee Golem" and "Oedipus and were generally domestic presented by the visiting. about the whole situation. Habimah at the BroadwaylEvery time the food of the ac-Theater. tors got cold, Miller and Rich- ft J' hj Jf Habimah Arrives, With 'Dybbuk' The visit of the Habimah.

The story of "The Dybbuk" international theater which has is concerned with a young flourished in Palestine sinceibride in a Polish village who 1932 and was founded in Mos-is "possessed" by the spirit of cow thirty years ago under the! her dead lover and exorcised great Stanislavsky and his pupil, through the ritual of the Chas-Vachtangov. happen next Sat- siclim a rabbinical cult who urday evening. The debut ill I practiced singing, dancing and be the first of a series of four jeabal. Incidental music is by celebrated plays in Hebrew. Engel.

scenery and costumes "The Dybbuk," a ci a in a i cby N. Altman. and the adapta-legend of mysticism and cabal jtion from Russian into Hebrew by S. An-ky. will ring up the 'by Chaim Bialik.

curtain. The engagement will The "no-star" system of last six weeks at the Broadway Habimah, which concentrates Theater, sponsored by the on ensemble acting, prohibits American Fund for Palestinian the hilling or glorification of that he was again in town, he called him by phone and arrangements were immediately made whereby Mr. Buchanan was to guest star in the Elwood P. Dowel role in "Harvey," at the 4.sth Street Theater, for four weeks following James Stewart's engagement. Mr.

Buchanan is one of the most versatile men in the theater, for when he isn't acting, singing or dancing he i.s producing, casting or directing. This favorite of London audiences was born in Glasgow, Sco'land, and there acquired his initial experience on the staue with the Glasgow Operatic Society. His first London engagement was understudy in Andre Char-lot's revue. "Bubbly." He later was assigned a good role in another Chariot revue, "Tails Up." Thereafter followed a long sue- ces-inii of successful ensra ce ments. He made a decided hit in the review "A to which played the Prince of Wales Theater.

In V)2 Mr. Buchanan made his first appearance on the American stage in the highlv successful "Chariot's Revue." which a No starred Beatrice Lillie and Gertrude Lawrence. He returned again in 1DJ6 with edition, which later 'went on tour. This attraction I opened the El Capitan Theater iin Hollywood. 'Y-; a Institutions, presented i tre, Inc.

Played by Habimah more than 1,100 times in numerous coun- the world theater, "The Dybbuk" was seen here during the company's last visit in 1027. At least half of the Habimah: cast In the forthcoming production appeared In the earlier presentation, and the original staging by Vachtangov has been retained through the years MAESTRO ALFREDO SALMAGGI, pioneer in pop price opera at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, at work in a brown study upon the set for "Aida," which will be one of his open-air rformances at the Triboro Stadium, Randalls Island, opening opera's contribution to New York's Golden Jubilee next July 9. "HOMECOMING," on M-G-M romantic drama starring Clark Gable and Lana Turner, will open Thursday at the Capitol..