Judge — October 4, 1919 — page 22: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Drown ly Wenwan Patven HE thin ice skat- ing season, which does not need to wait for low tem- peratures, opened By this autumn with “Nightie Night” and = “Scandal.” These plays represent the two great divisions of popu- lar theatric art: in “ Nightie Night” (all inferences fre the title to the contrary) she wears pink pajam Scandal” she wears an authentic robe de nuit. in The pajamas are the more flaunted and the more opaque. has a But along with the pajamas, “Nightie Night plot. Billy Moffat, a model Benedick, returning home from a business trip, meets on the a fair widow whom he knew in bygone days. She tells him she is in trouble. Impetu- ous Philip Burton, the “steady” of her sweet girlhood, lately re- appearing after seven years in South Ameri and knowing nothing of her marriage in the meantime or of her little boy, insisted at once upon her be- coming his wife—which she has just done, he having the license made out with her maiden name. Now she hasn’t the courage to tell him about her former marriage and her child. Because of that license, she isn’t So she has train even a legal wife. fled. Will Billy help her? Noble man that he is, he will. He knows Burton well, and he'll arrange things diplomatically The next scene is in the Moffats’ apartment. Billy ar- rives late. Thenin rushes Philip telling of his matri- mishap and begging Billy to help him scour t town for his truant bride— s he'll do anything if Billy will only help him. This gives Billy the opportunity he has been looking for. He'll help, if monia Dovores, or tHe Photo by Alfred Cheney Jobneton 22 Skittish Skimmers Lawton MackaLt comforted by the thought of 7 as a recompense, will Phil, adopt “a certain little boy in whom he happens to be interested. The inferences which Phil draws from this request are simply awful, but Billy bears them heroically, rixie’s being able to keep her child without PAi/’s guessing it is her own. But altruism gets a shock. The Moffats’ apartment has been theater a lady applie Ziecreip Fro.ic,” Coo.ry Executixe a ‘Train Howp-ur advertised brother acting as agent. for subleasing, Mrs. Moffar's While she and Billy are at the offering a large bonus for im- mediate possession of the prem- ises. The brother agrees to let her have the spare room for that night, and the rest of the apartment the next day. This sweet sublessee is Trixt The ensuing cataclysm is what might be expected. Billy stands convicted of leading a double life in his own home. His interest in Trixie’s child is ac- counted for only too clearly. He is at the mercy of an out- raged wife and the other wo- man’s husband. In short, he is the victim of carefully built uy and ingeniously sustained mis- understandings, until it becomes time for the commuters to look at their watches. Then presto! —the whole fabric of friskiness is permitted to collapse and thus ends a strictly innocent evening. “Scandal” is less speciously scandalous and more bald. In the bedroom scene, where Be- atrix, the rash butterfly, is con- fronted by Pelham Franklyn, whom (to save her reputation, which has been compromised with another man) she has an- nounced to her family as her secret husband — Charles Cherry and Francine Larrimore toss lines that gleam and glow like red-hot rivets. COMICDOOKS-cOM