The Daily Worker Newspaper, October 2, 1926, Page 8

“THE VAGABOND KING.” first act in this musica] play. You may or May not enjoy the rest. The first act opeis with @ tavern scene, Vagabonds, crooks and hold-up men make as colorful a crew of sing- ing cut-throats as you could wish to see. Francois Villon, poet and vaga- bond kind of this motley crew, is played by Dennis King. You will not get a characterization of Francois Vil- lon you had hoped for, but there’s a dash to the performance of the actor that literally sweeps you along—for a while. It is Villon, a Frenchman, but without French dressing, perhaps. You can blame the authors. Again they are not concerned so much with Intelligent characterization as they are with the kind that they feel “the public will like.” And they do like it! The ladies “just love it” and it is— wel the music is good. Dennis King leads the company in “The Song of the Vagabonds.” They sing it often thruont the night, and I can assure you they do it with a dash and whole-heartedness that will send you home singing it if there is a sin- gle note in your throat. The music as @ whole has life and a lilting gayety. You'll surely like it. The singing is fine. Dennis King does more for the play than the poor thing deserves. In the second act there’s a little gem we want you to watch for if you go to see it (at the Great Northern in Chicago). The police are coming! The tayern full of bragging, singing scoundrels becomes quiet. As the po- lice ‘pass they sing a little song with- out accompaniment about “a rope around his neck.” (If you recall your history, “necking parties” were quite popular in 15th century France.) The song is not listed in the program, but we'd give a lot to learn it. There’s a dash and irresponsible swing to both words and music. Rudolph Friml wrote the music for this play. It ig music well worth hear- ing. The play is based on tite story ‘If I were King.” , Business is business. The theater- art can go hang for all the producers care. All the music, the splendid song, the scenic artistry and beautiful costumes are but hand-maidens to the box office—not to intelligent pleasure. This musical play is but added proof of the fact, altho-it is by no means without a good deal of pleasure. But Shakespeare was wrong, comrades— dead wrong, “The Pay-Is the Thing!” WwW. C. “BLACK VELVET.” By Willard Robertson. LACK VELVET”: from the dra- matic viewpoint, a sloppily con- structed, melodramatic piece of work. In content, a foul, loathsome play, reeking with race prejudice and writ- ten and presented in a spirit well calculated to produce race riots and iynchings. “Black Velvet” is a good piece of work only in that it reflects with some accuracy the prejadices and _ limita- tions of the mind of the typical white southern planter. So befnddled is the pad“ Giee Yabial feeling, so low the ‘opiiions*eiipressed of the Negro race, that some of the audience were under the impression that the scene of Velvet” is laid before or im- mediately after the Civil War. Only by pointing out the type of costumes worn by the actresses was I able to convince the comrade who was with me that the date of the play is 1926, and the conditions it depicts are the conditiong which prevail today in that swamp of ignorance, our southern states. a The scene of the play is the garden of General John William Darr, the owner of a plantation in the “yellow pine” belt of the South. (This belt runs thru Georgia and South Caro- lina.) The plantation seems to thave been little affected by the Civil War and the reconstruction; the land is still poorly cultivated, the timber only half utilized; the region is peopled by the children and grandchildren of those who had been General Darr’s slaves, When the play opens Patricia Har- per, a northern girl, is visiting Alice Darr, the general's granddaughter. Patricia is the type of young lady who graciously excuses herself and deli- cately flutters away whenever the “gentlemen” discuss business matters or mattets not too “pleasant.” (Up to last Saturday I had thought this type of young lady extinct, even on the etage.) Mr. Harpet, Patricia's father, a northern capitalist with a large paunch and a mouthful of phrases about the “ideals of busi- ness” and the “vision of industry,” is arranging with General Darr to set up a sawmill on the plantation and eut down the timber. General Darr's grandson, John William, is ine love with Patricia, and is attempting to jet rid of his former mistress, a mu- ito girl, by name Cleo. (This is the “black velvet” woman who gives the play its name.) Cleo is portrayed as a sloppy, slouchy, lazy woman who cares for nothing but to attract the caressog of this, that, or the other man, Later on we meet Calhoun Darr, once the general's slave, now a local preacher—a typical “Uncle Tom” (damn the whole tribe of Uncle Playhouse Theater. Toms!)—slavish, servile, docile and devoted to his white “mas’r’s” inter- ests; “Yeller” Richmond, a mulatto from the North, of whom I shall have more to say later on, and Smith, an unscrupulous labor agent, recruiting Negroes for work in Northern cities. The keynote of the play is the re- mark of the Northern girl, Patricia Harper, that in spite of all the beauty of the South she is constantly op pressed by a sense of something hor- rible and loathsome, coiled up and ready’to spring. This leads to a con- versation with the General, who ex- presses his conviction that “the white man is the master, and must remain so;” that “terrible things” would hap- pen in such communities as his, where the blacks outnumber the whites, if the white man did not constantly as- sert his mastery over this “race of children and gorillas.” This belief is constantly reiterated thruout the play. The play begins to move when Mr. Harper, the Northern capitalist, comes in with the news that a-labor agent is persuading the Negroes of the plan- tation to come North with him, prom- ising them steady jobs at $10 a day. The Negroes, Harper reports, are very much excited; they are preparing to leave immediately, vacating their houses, piling their possessions on the streets. (This description is correct— just such scenes as this took place in hundreds of southern towns during the great Negro migrations that began in 1916.) The northern capitalist is wor- ried about a possible shortage of labor for his sawmill, and the general, pre- tending a paternalistic interest in “his people,” interviews the labor. agent, Smith, asking him where he is taking the Negroes and how long his job will last. Smith answers that the Negroes will know where they are going when they get off the train; that the job will last about six weeks, and that he doesn’t give a hang what happens to them afterwards, At the same time “Yeller” Rich- mond, the northern mulatto, has come Negro—has prey and makes love to method of seizing her by Richmond finds out that has been living with Cleo, mineg to have his revenge out who it is. John William, in the been making ardent love to Patricia, but she (pure maiden!) is frig! by the thought of an ; a kies, and John William ; the afnis of . The FF puters J Hi “ACROSS THE PACIFIC.” N our search for good pictures we were obliged to see many that were simply: awful—so awful we thought that here at last was the worst. But now we have come upon one-that for pure, unadulterated rot is the greatest crime ever perpetrated on the motion picture art. Attempting to cash in on the waye of patriotic revival and glorification of American history, due to the Sesqui-centennial, this is a pic- ture glorifying one of America’s great “achievements”—the conquest of the Philippines. ¢ Around the history of the event they have built a cheap melodrama that will prove difficult even for a 100 per cent klu-kluxer to swallow. So stren- uously do they work the patriotic racket in this picture to cover its ab- solute lack of a single redeeming fea- ture that one is reminded of the old days when George Cohan sent his chorus girls out in red, white and blue tights to draw applause from a soured audience. Monte Blue plays the lead- ing role—and a few others contribute acting that is bad enough to be suited to the picture. The story deals with the capture of Aguinaldo. His aids are fighting a Chinese villain and another who looks like a German. In the fighting (in which scenes are stolen from “The Big Parade” and done stupidly) an American soldier makes this apprecia- tion of the Philippire people in his dy- ing gasp: “Come on out in the open and fight, you yellow-bellied rats.” And to prove the valor of the fighting American soldier he is shown thumb- ing his nose at the enemy as he dies. I swear, comrades, that for sheer side- splitting stupidity this is unequalled in the history of motion pictures the world over. Four critics of Chicago’s papers (in which a paid adyertisement for the picture appears) were loud in their praise of this inexcusable ho- kum. To these four (who are not so “THE PASSAIC STRIKE”—Don't miss it or you will never forgive yourself. “VARIETY”—Splendid (Roosevelt) “MOANA”—Beau “MARE. NOSTRUM” — Abomin- able stuff> “THE ROAD TO MANDALAY” —Junk. “MANTRAP”—Yes and no. “SON OF THE SHIEK”— Valen- 0's it one. “THE AMATEUR GENTLEMAN” —Good well ac! (North Shore “TIN GODS"—Interesting (Cen- Park) “UP IN MABEL’S ROOM” — A comic in a Chemise, “LA BOHEME” — Worth while. “THE BAT’—Speoks—if you like them. Note: Only Chicago theaters show- ing a program for one week are listed. Pictures of current week changed M y. A PEEK EACH WEEK AT MOTION PICTURES stupid but who know where thetr wages come from) and to the produe ers, the Warner Bros., we award & delightful bouquet of decomposing onion tops; for the production and the promotion of the worst picture ever shown in America—barring none, —W, C, “ALOMA OF THE SOUTH SEAS.” OTION, not emotion, is the fea- ture of this picture. Gilda Gray, former Follies girl, dressed in a dainty brassiere and a heavy coat of tan, proves herself a good actress—when she dances. The Charleston made the shimmie less. profitable and this shapely maiden pursuing art “where she pays” has become a movie ac- tress. I should not say “become.” Not yet. 4 You know the story. They took it off rack No. 13 marked “South Sea Stuff” and had Gildie shimmie her (e)motions thru a “stirring drama” where the heart-broken white-man goes to the islands after losing his lady. He drinks everything. In fact, he goes thru a happy “pie-eyed” exist- ence until Aloma, the coy native maiden, spoils all the fun for the poor fish. And that’s that. The scenery will make you terribly homesick for Los Angeles. So will Gilda Grey. If you have ever seen the South’ Sea Islands, don’t go te see this picture. You are likely to burst a rib laughing at it. In Person. Together with a Samoan group of singers and dancers, Gilda Grey ap peared in person before the showing of the picture at the Chicago Theater. She appears in person and in very little more. Brother—she dances! It is easy to understand why the college boys have gone raving mad about her. The lights are dimmed, Gilda “does her stuff,” and you go away convinced more than ever that this little movie actress should be in the Ziegfeld Fol- lies, = W. C. a Me ILDA PARAMOUNS OED ALOMA oF une SOU of this, and expresses his horror that a white man should hold a colored woman in his arms. Up to this point the play has de- picted correctly the feelings of the white southerners towards the Negro. But this indignation of the general at sexual relations between white men and colored women is completely out of character. The white man of the south, both during slavery times and afterwards, has considered the Negro woman his lawful prey. Where did the thousands of mulattoes and even lighter-skinned Negroes come from, anyway? The typical white southerner has a horror only of miscegenation i a Fa Chicago Defender September 11 he is quoted as saying that he wrote “Black Velvet” because “he was disgusted and ashamed of conditions in the South and his motive was: to expose thru the play the hypocrisy of the white man.” And it is true that cer- tain portions of the play are delight- tee