The Brooklyn Daily Eagle from Brooklyn, New York • Page 27

OFF STAGE By George Currie BROOKLYN EAGLE, OCT. 30, 1949 27 On the Screen $h- It fj- i 1 t- '-jiMm I I 3fiUp5? ESI UA. -ffj: 4i () the the JULIAN MAYFIELD AND INEZ MATTHEWS in Maxwell Anderson-Kurt Weill musical, "Lost in Stars," opening tonight ot the Shubert Theater. 'Goodbye, DONALD CURTIS AND PEGGY FENN now in My Fancy" at the Martin, Beck. Week's Plays TONIGHT LOST IN THE STARS, at the Douglas Comedy and Hutton Farce Supply Lesson in Do's and Don'ts of Slapstick Rack in the old silver screen days, when silence was golden and slapstick was a must in anything that called itself ascomedy, audiences used to laugh their heads off at the Keystone Kops chases, custard-pie riots, other sorts of rough-house shenanigans, and they let it go at that.

They never bothered to think whether these seemingly undisciplined explosions of activity were really undisciplined or whether they were the results of careful planning and timing. And why should they have? Slapstick was just a cause for hilarious laughter, not for analysis. Besides, few in those days thought of the movies as an art and the few who did turned up their pedantic noses at this vulgar type of humor. Today we know better, as we watch the present crop of film-makers trying to recapture something of the vitality, bounce and uninhibited spirits that belonged to the film industry's lusty adolescence. The trend has been going on quite a few years now, taking in such works as "Hollywood Cavalcade," with ploppy custard pies once more sailing across the screen; Betty Hutton's "Perils of Pauline," based on Pearl White's career; Red Skelton's "The Fuller Brush Man," with its long slambang chase for climax, and even affecting the normally dignified Greer Garson, who kicked up a few didoes in "Julia Misbehaves." They all attempted, with varying degrees of success, to cash in on the now honorable art of slapstick.

The reason for bringing all this up can be found currently on two Broadway screens, "Everybody Does It," which is doing nicely at the Roxy, and "Red, Hot and Blue," winding up in several days at the N. Y. Paramount. First," let's take up "Red, Hot and Blue," Betty Hutton's latest vehicle, if anybody should be able to bring back the olden days, when all hell would break loose on the screen and each of the characters would dash off in all four directions at the same time, Betty Hutton's the girl who should be able to do it. Single-handed, too.

She has seemingly endless energy, a rowdy, uninhibited personality for the cameras, at any rate and she knows how to explode without going all to pieces. It doesn't do her any good, though, in "Red, Hot and Blue," because the slapstick in this Paramount work is just about as aimless as it appears to be, especially in the bebop, or whatever you want to call it, version of "Hamlet." There's plenty of noise, activity and general wild goings-on in this song-and-dance skit, but there's no point to it. It just isn't funny, unless it gratifies a feud you've been carrying on with Shakespeare ever since high, school days. It's rough-house for rough-house's sake, with no sense of direction. A little better Is the climax, in which Betty Hutton, abetted by Victor Mature, gives some comic gangsters cause to regret they ever kidnapped her.

This sequence has a purpose to it, at least, the purpose being the routing of the gangsters and the complete wrecking of their hideout. All the same, it's still routine handling of routine slapstick. "Red, Hot and Blue" tries hard, and the effort shows. It takes imagination and a lot of planning to make slapstick look spontaneous. As for "Everybody Does It," it doesn't depend, actually, on slapstick for its chief appeal.

This new 20th Century-Fox comedy, and a bright, happy one it is, too, is chiefly a showcase for Paul Douglas' considerable talents and refreshingly different personality. The reason for mentioning it jhere is because it also rings in some knockabout comedy ot help the story to an end, some good knockabout comedy, even though it's a bit out of key with this clever take-off on the operatic world. Anyway, the scene that finds Paul Douglas turning an operatic stage into shambles by tumbling down a long flight of stairs is genuinely hilarious because it leads up to something. That's the close-up shot of Douglas, groggy from his fall and an overdose of anti-stagefright nostrums, propping his face in his hand and grining sheepishly, like a little boy who knows he has done something wrong, at the startled audience. And all the while this is happening, operatic star Linda Darnell and several other indignant singers are desperately carrying on with the show, trying to ignore this lumox of an amateur and thereby doubling the comic effect of the scene.

"Everybody Docs It," in other words, appreciates the value of restraint, even when applied to slapstick. It resorts to disciplined, pr controlled, slaptsick, and that's the best kind. Concerning Our Present Theater And Return of a Wandering Critic Let it not be said that this column is a waving of the flag. Substantially, N. critics have been more or less savage in dealing with American plays and, now and then, rather kind to importations.

But this week a little something is a-brewing. "THEATER arts" for November prints the script of "The Madwoman of Chaillot," now at the Royale Theater. And it also prints the report of its traveling critic, Eric Bentley, in re: Our contemporary theater. He doesn't like "The Madwoman." He also has several animadversions concerning "Death of a Salesman," at the Morosco. He stalls off tearing into the Giraudoux play.

His complaint is that Maurice Valency's adaptation isn't the original drama. Now, this is true enough. Even a neophyte knows that a re-photographed photograph loses something in the process and this holds true in tranlations. A Chechoslovakian audience doesn't think in the same idiom of the coal miners of Pennsylvania, nor does, for that matter, a Paris audience think in the idiom of a translation of an American play. It happens to be one of those things about which it is childish to complain.

He does say, for instance: "In France a Giraudoux style of performance has ripened and is now over-ripe; in America the fruit is still green." But he adds: "The difficulty is not only that so much of the dialogue is untranslatably French and that so much of a Giraudoux play is dialogue. It is also that Giraudoux's plays involve so many French things and French attitudes." One passes by the inevitable inference that therefore Giraudoux is a hopeless playwright for Broadway. The fact that Mr. Valency has been able to translate Giraudoux into an entertaining evening of theater on W. 41th St.

doesn't Eeem to matter. This is a preciosity just too, too. Much more interesting is Mr. Bentley's distress occasioned by Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman." Now, "The Salesman" happens to be one of box-office's "Big Three," the other two being "South Pacific" and "Kiss Me, Kate," both musicals. It is a shining mark for a critic returned from Europe because it i3 drama.

Lee Cobb as Willy Loman, wearying as reports have it of the role, has indeed put on a wonderful performance. His pathetic ambition for his sons and the frustration of all his hopes, including paying off the mortgage, have been truly a "creation," the word Mr. Bentley uses. Most seem to agree that "The Salesman" is a tragedy of human emotion. American emotion, if you will.

What Mr. Bentley doesn't seem to realize is that American emotion has become a matter of world concern, whether this thought is relished abroad or not. It is a fact to be faced. And his dragging in the political asides which have it that Mr. Miller may have a Marxist slant hardly does him justice as a critic.

Few in the aisle, seats noticed on opening night that either Lenin or Stalin was speaking from the stage. Those who did were surely and enthusiastically finding fault. This matter of translating shows from one idiom to another is a dangerous critical plaything. In the United States the tragedy of a little man is recognizable. He has no knowledge of how a sidewalk cafe in Paris should look.

Rather, he would complain if a roadway diner, serving him a hamburger, wasn't clean. He would be shocked by a bistro in the French provinces. Our little men don't upset governments overnight. They are stubborn, which might be an explanation of why they have in their own way become great. Often in their failures, they are magnificent.

Like Willy Loman, who didn't know he didn't have to commit suicide to save the family's house. Only London has begun to try to understand it. Pravda laughs at it in terms which make us laugh at Pravda. Mr. Bentley's cheerful misunderstanding of the American scene he sums up, thusly, about "The "If it is too much to ask that Mr.

Miller know which of two feasible plays he wanted to write, one can ask that he clear aside rhetorical and directorial bric-a-brac and look more closely to his people. Has he given us a suitable language for his tarts? Are the sons of Willy seen with the eye or just constructed from the idea that the present generation is 'lost'? Is Willy's marriage there for us to Inspect and understand down to its depths? It would be unfair to push these questions to include Willy himself, for he could not be a satisfactory character while the central contradiction of the play stands unresolved. Is his littleness the product of the capitalistic system? Or is it Human Nature? What attitude are we to have to it? Pity? Anger? Or just a lovely mish-mash?" One refrains from answering all these furious questions with the little old-fashioned phrase: "Pish-posh." Music Rox Theater. The Playwrights Company produces a musical by Maxwell Anderson and Kurt Weill, with Todd Duncan, Leslie Banks, Warren Coleman, Inez Matthews, Julian Mayfields, William Greaves and Frank Roane featured. Rouben Mamoulian directed.

George Jenkins did the settings. The show is based upon Alan Paton's "Cry, the Beloved Country." TOMORROW REGINA, at the 4fith St. Thea ter. Cheryl Crawford presents the Marc Blickstein operetta based upon the Lillian Hell- man play, "The Little Robert Lewis directed. Jane Pickens heads the cast.

Credits run too long to be reproduced in this space. WEDNESDAY I KNOW MY LOVE, at the Shu bert Theater. The Theater Guild, with John C. Wilson, brings back the Lunts in S. N.

Behrman's play based upon the original of Marcel Achard. Mr. Lunt directed. Settings and costumes are by Stewart C'haney. Cast includes Katharine Bard, Betty Caulfield, Doreen Lang, Henry Barnard, LUNT and Lynn Fontanne, who appear in the Theater Guild plus John C.

Wilson production, "I Know My Love," the S. N. Behrman play based on Marcel Achard's original, at the Shubert Theater next Wednesday evening. Esther Mitchell, Charles Bow- den and Mary Pickett. study in France and four years at the Juilliard School on scholarships.

Shortly after, the FRIDAY Jane Pickens Picked Role; Tomorrow She Will Sing It LOVE ME LONG, at the 49th St. act that began when the princi "People are only kidding when they tell me I'm a natural for the role of Regina," says Jane Pickens, "but they don't know how right they are." The "people," of course, are referring to Theater. Brock Pemberton presents Doris Frankel's new play with a cast headed by Shirley Rooth, George Keane, Russell Harid, Anne Jackson, Harry Bannister, etc. Mr. Pemberton and Margaret Perry directed.

John Root did the setting. Jane's origin in the deep South, the drawl that has remained witn ner tnroutrn her many stints in many places and her pals were four, six, and eight, burst into the radio, stage, and screen as "Three Little Maids from The drive and persistence were there and before long she was back on top as a singer in the nation's leading night clubs the Versailles, the Starlight Room of the Waldorf, the Cotillion Room, and the Cocoanut Grove. Not stopping there she became radio's top voice with the "American Melody Hour" on CBS and the Jane Pickens show on NBC. Now she was able to step tall, handsome appearance, part is a gruelling one, keeping her on the stage, singing, for two hours of the two and a half Modernized Maurice Evans Still Tied to Shakespeare Jane, however, was drawing a hour show. Music Courses mental parallel between the tremendous, fixed singleness of Sadler's Wells Closes Run The Brooklyn Conservatory purpose that knew nor bounds, Maurice Evans, the Shakes in a of Music announces that It will learned to act, I played host of modern dramas But singing two hours a day doesn't alarm Jane; she's been singing since she was four.

Everyone in the family sang, and the three sisters began har pearean, has hung some of his bed- offer courses in the Schillinger Elizebethan wigs and cloaks on With Two N. Y. City Premieres the shelf thi3 season to make monizing as a trio when they his first appearance in this The final week of the Sad Bouquet," Sunday mat were four, six, and eight, little out of the night clubs and get back to the work she had spent ler's Wells Ballet at the Metro inee, Nov. 6: "The Sleeping country in a modern role in Terence Rattigan's "The Brown became warped, and resulted in the Regina of Lillian Hellman's "Little and her own personal drive that netted her the role In Marc Blitz-stein's musical drama based on the Hellman play, which opens at the 40th St, Theatre tomorrow. Jane began working on the part of Regina with Director Robert Lewis on the sixth day knowing that the fun they were having as "kids" would some politan Opera House brings the System under authorized instructors, and also a new program in the opera school which will include dramatics, acting and staging as well as coaching.

The work can be taken in individual or group instruction. ing version at the Coronet premieres of "Checkmate" and so many years training for. She began a series of concerts in which she broke away from the room farces, and musical comediesabout as classical fare as Fred Allen's." As corroboration, Mr. Evans recalls his Initial appearance on the stage as a walk-on and understudy to nine roles in a choice item entitled "The One-Eyed Herring." This wa.s fol-lowed by a job under-studying Leon Lion, producer, director and star of a production called "Listeners." Mr. Lion day make them the most famous singing act of the Thirties.

"Job," both created by Ninette Theater. "It's a refreshing change to be a contemporary man again," says he who has spent most of his 14 years in America It certainly never occured to Jane, because at the age of 11 she rie Valois, director of the English and both sched uled for their first perform Beauty Sunday evening, Nov. 6: "The Sleeping Beauty." Benefit The Hudson Guild Neighborhood House will sponsor a benefit performance of "Touch and Go," the new George Abbott musical hit, at the Broad-hurst Theater, Nov. 29. Lnrollment Is now in progress for the term which begins Nov was awarded a scholarship to the Curtis Institute of Music taditional and made difficult operatic arias understandable.

Then came the announcement that Marc Blitzstein was writing, a musical based on "The Little Foxes" and, in her own words, Jane knew "Regina was articulating the rhymed meter 14. For further details, inquire ances next Wednesday evening. "Job," originated in 1931, is the work to which the birth of of the Bard. 58 7th Brooklyn 17, N. Y.

of July and continued working five hours every day until the show went into rehearsal at the beginning of September. The and was on her way to a career on the concert and opera stages. This was followed by a year's MAIn 2-3300. "It's a mistake to think of me exclusively as an actor of for me. classics.

In England, where soon decided two chore were sufficient and called on Kvang to play the lead on the stage. Later on, when Evans became bitter know in England, he-was cast as the romantic lead in a musical comedy, "Ball at the Savoy," In which the big scene had Evans croonine soft the Sadler's Wells Ballet is attributed. It is a danse masque by Geoffrey Keynes and Gwendolen Raverat based on William Blake's version of the Book of Job with music by Vaughan Williams and decor by John Piper. The title role will be portrayed by Robert ly from the bow of a gondola. "Checkmate is set on a Mr.

Evans' first encounter with the classics came at the mm mm viis chessboard designed by E. Mc- behest of Dame May Whittv who persuaded him to loin 'J the Old Vic. There in one sea-son he played Caesar, Petruc chio, Iago, Benedick, Hamlet and Richard II, until he could hardly talk except 1m rhymed couplets. 1 Knight Kauffer and uses music by Arthur Bliss. The major pieces In this balletic game of love and death will be danced by Beryl Grey, Gerd Larsen, Alexis Rassine and John Field.

"Checkmate" was first produced by the Sadler's Wells Ballet in Paris, June 15, 1937. The third ballet on Wednesday night's program will be -f-S SI if Si That Man, Again At the McCarter Theater. Princeton, X. next Wednes "Symphonic Variations with Margot Fonteyn, Moira Shearer and Pamela May. This program day Max Gordon launches the V' fmmm.

be renpatpd nn Fnnav. nation-wide tour of Monty Woolley in his Original role in the Moss Hart-George S. Kauf. man comedy, "The Man Who The complete program for the week, including the extra matinee on Thursday follows: it' Came to Dinner." After preliminary perform Tuesday evening, Nov. 1: "Le Lac des Cygnes," Wednesday evening, Nov.

2: "Checkmate," "Symphonic Var ances in Wilmington on next Thursday, Friday and Saturday, the attraction moves into the Walnut St. Theater, Phila. delphia. for a brief encase. iations," "Job Thursday matinee, Nov.

3: "The Sleeping Thursday evening, Nov. 3: "The Sleeping Friday evening, Nov. 4: "Check-! mate," "Symphonic Variations," Saturday matinee, Nov. 1 1 ment. Boston follows, then a tour to thexWest Coast with week stands in all key cities and a limited engagement in Chicago.

The supporting cast of 30 includes Jay Prfsson, Gloria Mo-Ghee, Rax O'Malley, Jerry Jar rett, Mardetta Evans, 5: "Checkmate," "A Wedding Bouquet," "The Rake's Saturday evening, Nov. "Checkmate," "A Wedding SHIRLEY BOOTH, starring in Doris Frankel's new play, "Love Me Long," opening at the 48th St. Theater next Friday evening under Brock Pemberton's aegis. JANE PICKENS, who will play the title rove in "Regina" tomorrow night at 46th St. Theater in musical version of "The Little Foxes." MARIE POWERS, contralto, to sing leading roles in the double Menotti bill, "The Old Maid and the Thief" and "The Medium," at N.

Y. C. Center Saturday evening. i.