Evening Star Newspaper, November 1, 1931, Page 57

AMUSEMENT SECTION he Sundwy Star. WASHINGTON, FRA *BRIE JOH! N BARRYMORE “THE MAD GENIUS - METROPOLITAN AN NCINE LARRIMORE ¥ MOMENT”~ BELASCO Ancient Drama Returns Once More to Tempt Fate With That ‘After Music and Modern Comedy Comes Shake- speare and a New P Lnrrimore—Theater upon its nose, Drama— with a big D—will hop to its time-honored perch in the Na- tional Theater tomorrow evening, and the curtain will go up for a ghy. It will not be a new pla{ ut doubtless many in the audi ence may class it a daring, per- haps a sophisticated, expos?uean Shough it tack o f hyth: oug! e romp of r! - mic melody or the mournful moan of the g modern. It will be just one of those merry, old, long-forgotten outgaurlnn of the Elizabethan age, by a mummer who once upon a time was ac- claimed a marvel among men. Some, indeed, may think him such even now and still able to keep step and march with a lively gait to the tune of the ages. Doubt- less there will be llngfing ghosts of the past on hand to accord the welcome that once was his, even though hampered by thrilling memories of the vanished “Vani- ties” or interrupted by left-over les that belonged to Joe 's gadgets. The occasion at least will offer opportunity to the present generation to determine really if “the play’s the thing.” or the pretty star, he or she, is more important in our theater now nude or nonsensical. * ok x x CIRTAINTY has developed into a thing so volatile in con- mnection with the chronicling of possibilities in our theat- rical midst of late that, were not the distinguished and dependable Guthrie McClintic standing spon- sor for it, one might be disposed to question the announcement that the gifted and delightful Francine Larrimore will be found in the Shubert-Belasco Theater tomorrow evening in S. N. Behr- man’s latest play, “Brief Mo- ment,” and heart-warming humor al- ready are being talked of thecoun- try over. And if that should not meet the' full strength of the de- mands, there will be with her no less a supporter than Alexander ‘Woollcott, who, in his day, made life miserable for tortured producers of the drama and sen- sitive players of the theater by his caustic comment upon their product. However, Mr. Woollcott, even more so than the tantalizing Heywood Broun, has also an es- tablished rank and fame in the halls of mimicry. So that he well may be expected to have that something which will entitle him to share in the honors of the en- tertainment Cleveland, Ohio, where “Brief Moment” first broke the shell of its concealment, was By W. H. ITH a ‘hitch in its an- cient wig, a sharpening of the crimson liplines and a dab of powder #0 highly delighted with the hatch | that even the blase New York commentators are showing signs | of interested expectancy. This is little short of a wonder in this day and generation. It should, likewise, be a recommendation to patronize Mr. Behrman's play, even though you may be most favorably impressed with the at- tractive line of endeavors an- nounced for Mr. Shakespeare. R NOTE of joy, rich in mellow fullness, comes from the drama _country hard by Long Is- land. It says that “Hot and Both- ered,” another musical comedy, is being nurtured by Boston patron- age, or will be so nurtured, by its metropolitan promoters for a tri- umphant Manhattan premiere about Christmas time. It will thus do double duty, for it is ex- ted to break loose first in all ts glory in Beantown about Thanksgiving day. Thus does mode{n taste set aside the Christ- mas ™ pantomime which the tmve?y old-timer loves to growl about! Also. it appears, we are, right now, this very day, to learn the truth about Hollywood, after . whose effervescent wit | has | of Later Mold lay Starrind Francine News and Comment. Landvoigt. waiting all these painful years, for Hollywood seems to have caught Burton Holmes in its mesh, and he is going to tell us the whole, honest-to-goodness truth about the beautiful land where the movie robots operate. * % % x ND yet, with this pleasant prospect fresh before uscomes g, in'the same breath, “Why “Lord loveth He chasten ‘e are surprised onlookers while the National Army swallows our local police foree, but worse tidings from Gotham tell us that the recen an- nounced Shubert receivership is going to result in less theaters in New York “as well as out of town.” That quoted phrase sounds mighty like a threat that Wash- ington may lose 50 per cent of its legitimate theaters. It will be recalled that we have but two. Now, how can one be optimistic and happily hustle this old be- fuddled world into whoops of joy with this danger staring us in the face?. Washington is never very {fortunate in its assignments of | quotas, but to lose half of what ! | we have in the temples of the im- | | mortal drama sounds tough even to the hard-boiled, especially | with the further news that that {fine theater that some one was | (to build at Pennsylvania avenue | and Thirteenth street has already |faded into emptiness, if not farther. & P BUt the Scriptures tell us also that “The Lord tempers the |wind to the shorn lamb.” and (again we try to mend the broken links and piece the chain of hope | together. ‘Our old friend, Robert | E. Sherwood, who also knows and has told us many things about Hollywood, is going to have his |say in the halls of the legitimate a week hence, when the Theater Guild, our one reliance in days of dramatic sorrow, will bring his new play, “Reunion in Vienna to the National. . And in the not- so-very-far-distant-hereafter the guild also promises us selections from a group of plays, includ- ing “Mouring Becomes Electra,” Eugene O'Neil’s latest play, which the news reports say outdoes the | very best that ever could be; that wicked Bernard Shaw’s “Too True to Be Good”; Emil Ludwig’s story of the Peace Conference, “Ver- sailles”; Paul Green's “The House of Connelly,” which ‘some folks say is the best ever; H. R. Lenor- mand's psychological study, “The Coward.” and Eueene Gurster's satirical . farce,. “Three Times Waterloo.” Guild promises Washington. and the chief joy in the promise is H that the Theater Guild always mandges to live up to expecta- tions. And if this is not enough to make joy for all hands, there is the further fact that just two weeks out beyond the 12-mile limit Rachel Crothers’ comedy, “As Husbands Go.,” is slowly steaming to port, and that port the National Theater in Wash- ington. Barrymore Film Elaborate. I¥ John Barrymore's ltest Wamer picture, “The Mad Genius,” now at the Metropolitan Theater, early se- quences of the story show the star as master of a traveling marionette show. For this part of the story the Club | Titerero, Hollywood's principal puppet shop., worked night and day for two months, building figures and apparatus for the few brief scenes in which the puppets actually appear. Later incidents take place against the elaborate background of European the- aters in rehearsals and performances of the Russian Imperial Ballet, where the balf-mad impresario, Tsarakov works out bis demoniac devices. Three comblete | ballets were trained by Adolph Bolm ! (for these sequences. Although e | dances and dancers appear only as at- mosphere for the story, three | theater interiors were Mt:‘ these scenes. | All this the Theater D. SUNDAY - ERIC MAXON SSUAKESPEAREAN DRAMA® WATIONAL. JOEL McCREA and, KAY FRANCIS "GIRLS ABOUT TOWN "~ EARLE LAWRENCE TIBBETT, JIMMY DURANTE, ERNEST TORRENCE STHE CUBAN LOVE SONG* - PALACE Fries Fat' _Out of Bacon T has remained for Stratford to fry the fat out of Bacon. ‘The most anti-Baconians in “Is it not monstrous to suppose that | this downright outspoken, fearless man | the | bad turned conspirator and acted such | world come from Shakespeare’s birth- an outrageously false lndvDerfldlmu' place, and the statements from the role as the Baconians imagine? Con- Stratford-Upon-Avon Shakespeare Fes- sider for a moment what Ben Jonson, tival Co, now in our midst, leave no who was well acquainted with the life | and works of Shakespeare, wrote of | doubt as to who wrote the plays of him: Shakespeare. “Apart from Lord Bacon's lack of | Th’ aPplause, ability for such work as playwriting.” | yy sh begins the thesis, “his whole life, well | iSoul of the age. delight, the wonder of our stage. akespeare, rise! I will not lodge thee by | known for its serious aims, forbids any Ck’z;:‘crr or Spenser, or bid Beaumont one to suppose he could have had 2|, jiige further, to make thee room:|sion of Franz Molnar's “The Guards- | A man with a high brow, a high fore- hand in the creation of such charac- Thou ters as Falstaff, Dogbarry, Pistol, Bar- | And art alive still while thy book doth dolph, Malvolio, Petruchio and Bene- dick And,” W. Bridges Adams, director of the company, asks, “what interest could Bacan find ‘in all the light tal and romances of Shakespeare’s brillia comedies.” Were not such studies foreign to Lord Bacon's tastes, as displayed by his writings?" queries Mr. Adams. “But Shakespeare, like the bee. could Behrm extract honey from them all. He was the great alchemist who could tra: base metals into gold; and so, could Bacon, but for vety dif- t purposes. Each followed the bent s genius, each worked for differ- biects, precisely as those do Who | d their writings. Imagine William Cobbett composing a five-act play! Imagine Charles Matthews or Theodore ook writipg a long, serious discourse on taxes! “To ask one to believe that Bacon wrote Shakespeare is like supposing that Lord Brougham was the author not only of Dickens' works, but o Thackeray's and of Tennyson's as well Shakespeare is all action, life and poetry; Bacon is all _contemplation, calmness and repose; Shakespeare all imagination, wit and humor; Bacon all logic. science and sense. “"As far as we know, says a writer In Temple Bar,.it would have been as impossible for Lord Bacon to portray character in action as it would have been forelgn 1o Shakespedre’ mind to have r ed from propositions to & logical system.’ . It is well engaged Ben Jonson to turn some of | { Eleanor Robson Belmont and Harriet | more there in “Brief Moment.” [Ford, and this he followed with Lewis | th 3 |Clintic staged “The Trial of Mary | producers before the public, | experience in all theater. Beginnii n. | known that Lord Bacon his philosophical writings into Latin.”| continues Mr. Adams, “and the great philosopher treated the learned dram- atist so well that the latter ever spoke with respect and esteem of him. What a pity Jonson did not avail himself of | his acquaintance with Bacon to intro- duce his brilliant friend Shakespeare to him and afterward give an account of | the interview! What a delicious bit of reading that account would be: and it vould have meant a new immortality for Ben Jonson. “If Bacon were the author of the plays attributed to Shakespeare, is it Shakespeare the sole and entire for them and eul him boundless way he did? cred! in the | credible that honest Ben, knowing the | |two men as he did. would have z‘"'\'{‘l live, And we have wits to read, or praise | to give. " 1 MORNING, NOVEMBER 1, Motor, Aviation, Radio Programs 1931. 49 Sxercues 8y SuoouTh NORMAN FOSTER and. VRECKLESS LIVING ~ WILL ROGERS snd GRETA NISSEN SAMBASSADOR. BILL* = #O X CLARKE RIALTO Takes Off BY DONALD H. CLARKE. YNN FONTANNE, the Theater, Guild star, who, with her husband, Alfred Lunt, has just finished her work | in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's picture ver- | “highbrow.” { “‘Highbrow,’ " she says, “has come to | have a warped significance. Versatile IE McCLINTIC, who pre- Francine Larrimore in 8. N. new comedy, “Brief Mo- s career in the theater vividly A. Milne’s “The Dover uring Winifred Lennihan Cherry, that introduced a producer to Broadway had been known as & young | during the Grace rtory season in the New | York playhouses. Then. in association | with Winthrop Ames, he produced a mystery play, “In_the Next Room.,” by | GL‘THR sent. f | Lettes was A Beach's “The Square Peg.” Blanche Bates acted for him in “Mrs. Part- ridge Presents In contrast to high comedy, Hc-‘ Dugan” and “Crime” for A. H. Woods. He acted in and directed “Jealousy,” | the two-character play for Fay Bainter. | He brought out Maxwell Anderson's comedv. “Saturday's Children.” and then directed “The Green Hat” for his ! Stage and Screen Attractions This Week NATIONAL—“Merry Wives of Windsor.” ‘Tomorrow evening. GAYETY—“Sugar Babies” (burlesque), BELASCO—"“Brief Moment.” evening. ON THE PALACE—“Cuban Love Song.” This afternoon and evening. FOX—“Ambassador Bill.” This METROPOLITAN—"“The Mad Genius.” evening. COLUMBIA—“Susan Lenox, Her and evening: EARLE—“Girls About Toyn.” 'This afternoon and evening. Producer wife, Katherine Cornell. In fact, all the plays in which Miss Cornell has starred, McClintic has produced, “The “The Age of Innocents,” “Dis- | honored Lady” and “The Barretts of In a dozen years McClintic has had one, perhaps two. successful plays on| Broadway each season. In later years | he has found time to direct talking | pictures, the latest being “Once a| Dady,” starring Ruth Chatterton. Katherine Cornell, having leased the Belasco Theater in New York, will ap- pear there next season. In the mean- time McClintic will present Miss l;m. ter Fall he will star Pauline Lord in Dot Totheroh's “Distant Drums,” and perhaps produce Noel Coward’s “Post- mortem.” McClintic, unlike some of the departme ng as an actor, he be- came a director with Jessie Bonstelle'’s stock companies in Buffalo and Detroit. For a period he was casting director and stage manager for Winthrop Ames. Tomorrow evening, This afternoon and SCREEN afternoon and evening. This afternoon and Fall and Rise.” This afternoon KEITH'S—“Consolation Marriage.” This afternoon and evening. RIALTO—“Reckless Living.” This afternoon and evening, JOUnE | because their authors, Sl the Curse “People use it today as a term of semi-contempt to indicate something that is affected, that strives to seem superfor to the rest of the world. “‘Highbrow’ doesn’t mean this at all. a monument without & tomb, | man,” objects to the chlrlctenvntlon‘held. is usually & man of greater in- telligence, Therefore, a thing that is highbrow is something that awakens a man’s intelligence to greater and more careful thinking. “Practically every plot we have-ever done .at the Theater Guild has been done before. Certainly tHe situation in ‘The Guardsman,’ that of a man mak- ing iove to his own wife, is not new. “The one thing in our past plays that has added the ‘highbrow’ touch is the . matter of treatment. We believe that there are two ways of treating an y | Wimpole Street.” | given scene—first, eoarsely, crudely and obviously with carelessly chosen words, or carefully, subtly, intelligently, with every word chosen to deliver an exact shade of meaning. “That is all the expression ‘highbrow” amounts to. Two of the funniest com- edies ever written are two in which Alfred and I have played—sSil Vara's ‘Caprice’ and Molnar’s ‘The Guards- man.’ The wrong use of the word ‘highbrow’ indicates something stodgy and deadly serious. Neither of these plays are anything but uproariously gt “But at the same time they are de- highbrow. They are highbrow Vara and Molnar, used the uggg parts of their brains to put into t! more beautiful and more expressive language. Neither would be one-half so amusing were 'fihney written with less care and less esse. “In talkies Alfred and I would point to ‘The Divorcee' as a case in point. not because it is dull * * * it is al fact, it snaps along a little than the Twentieth Century 3 ?tmunk‘wqfigm woyen situations and its splen- re-llyhhh. GR * susan uh"‘ {SARBO Greta Garbo RETA GARBO has now the crown of Hollywood se- curely tied to her head. Those who plan to knock it off will have consider- able trouble. The glorious Greta has attained to that point where no hands, let alone tongues, can re: her. High on her Swedish silence and watches the world about her with that —mystical by Swedish icicles, nor does she sail in unfs fashion .up and down the ords. The icicles have melted— w :he has melted—and Those who have seen Garbo in her recent picl "!utnmhenox” will . und %"‘ have obse m: is less encased in , calculating tery. While in e’ vmed:l::tonen!m;ul: ' sister celluloid m‘fl?fi as Susan she dinary aptitude for natural com- edy. “Miss Garbo a comedienne —never!” say’ some. And yet why not? She has be, to un- earth the possibilities of her forte in that direction, she smiles and the audience smiles, laughs and the audience laugl d what are laughs if they aren’t the offsprings of humor? This spark of joy and content- ment for the greener things of life is something to be thankful for. It suggests that the length of her cinematic life will not be E n, yes n{: llild m;r-bm no; that eternal g around, as though each breath was an un- healthy rgsp and each-smile but the prologue for a flood of tears. Those who have expected her to g: on in a continuous round of atings and bruises will find that such is not the case. We venture to predict, in fact, that with the coming seasons there will be more blue and less glycerin in her eyes. This state of joy in the dst of sorrow -is one of the potent reasons why Miss Garbo is as great as she is. Few actresses capitalize both the stermer and ton. is famed for her splendid harassing; Miss Shearer’s ar- dent customers rave about her starry-eyed emoti ; Miss Ina ClaiYe reaches the Wi she indulges in supes ted badinage, and Miss Harding has {that gentle quality of refinement which carries her so happily through whimsy. But Miss Garbo can be silly as well as sad. This may sound like a doubtful ac- complishment, but -those who know their drama know that tragedy is often hest conceived by introducing its opposite as a stimulus. A ‘mixture of laughter and tears is the ideal recipe for 100 per cent entertainment. Many will, of course, claim that “Susan Lenox” isn’t by any means 100 per cent. It isn’t. But Miss Garbo is—and that is the proof of this pudding. She has easily outplayed all her other creations. A woman of serious studv and evident ambition who is certainly not content to gaze back unon | earlier triumpohs with more than studied and studied the error of ;;hGP ways and is now launched | upon such a career as will un- | doubtedly make history. At the moment she is unquestionably the Sarah Be f the rnhardt o screen. If there are doubters, let them suggest somebodv in her place. Frau Dietrich? Come now—with all seriousness—please! * x k¥ JFOR the first time, too, Miss Garbo has gotten herself an “opposite” who is ouf she was content wif . | the Ga | leasly B " ot vin &qm who ‘i:;: need- Lenox she exhibits an extraor- |° lighter mediums, Miss Chatter- {5 b, | necessary satisfaction. who has it IOX, HER PALL and RISE™corsmam Takes Up High and Mighty Job As Queen of Hollywood Her Recent Cinema Work Is Climaxed by Role in "Susan Lenox"—Aid From Young Mr. Gable. Hitherto Unknown Smile and a Laugh or Two. By E. de S. Melcher. her and Mr. Gable ‘&lm ogpum with "a stren irather than detracts from the t le she sits in some kind of | does in hers. therein | him Miss i xJ £ g2 g : § H agg s 3Eef ExdgEey : i i ) ? § and what a Guinevere turned out to be! Long life g = per cent | te not until she had finished her educa- tion in Hunter College, New York City that she seriously turned her aftentior il fity £ 1 ¢ H 88 8 5» i3 i ; i 5 i ] i ] § g £ 2 (4 3o H E z £ | o i | 1 z : d i { ] ; | 5 i §§§ j 2 H H H g i LA : 2§ i g 2 Bt g 5 I i She is not "D?Izl Moment,” starring rimore, offers such tick le insist. ] | E i g BW i 5 | il £ty i Eggi o b 8 : i S “f i = i gt .a.ii | i : £ iz E g 9 e g lEE§ fi? o ol