Judge — February 23, 1924 — page 15: what you’re looking at

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

“MISS DANE’S DEFENSE” By George Jean Nathan I that it isn’t [ must confess that the play which makes a lot of fuss over a young TRUST woman's going wrong no longer makes the same impression on me that it used to. Lean remember the day when Ie would all excited over such a theme and discuss it for hours with the neighbor's boy after we had finished making telephones out of empty Royal Baking Powder cans and resined cord Many the time he and I, Freeall, uscd to get on our velocipedes and hold converse, while riding along the brick sidewalks, on the profound philosophies that Yen Jones, Art Pinero, Syd that gerald’s, matter—so quickly do fashions change Fitz- About ten thousand heroines have surrendered their in Scott persons in the drama of the last twenty-five vears, and the business has grown addition, such surrender had. The the pages of tiresome. In kick it once goo mto in has not the dramatic however, [shall reasons for this, not this famil Inagazine, Katharine Cornell giv of the Sa very fine performance, inl: Nesbitt, indignant beau. role of the seducée. Tom however, is le convincing in the role of the good, but Seiae-ani Nis quieter moments arc when he essays more viol nt drama he acts the way Gilda Gray dances. am a bad Grundy and the rest of the I lish gents were then dishing out Their plays affected us deeply They were used to put it. But that day nd in the years that have as we strong. alas, is far gon passed since then the dramatic the Seventh mandment has come to he violation of Com pos sessed of about as much alarm as a wrist watch. There is to-day something more or less ¢ which young mic about a play racket sexual makes a over a women’s misde The scene in which the concupiscent Lord Geoffrey Fit hugh Dudelsock demands the pet son of the fair Hope Goldfarb in meanor. return for the papers that would incriminate her sweetheart her», Lieut. Alastair Pabst-—a seen that once made theater-goers talk for a month—now produces in mild) snicker. And the one in which the evil old rou them but a locks the door, places his back inst it, and tells the heroine that he has her at last in his power with the heroine, wide-eyed, yell “Oh, God, that, not this scene no longer per ng. not that! suades even the youngest: stage- hand to stop chewing his tobacco It is because of the for a moment. this general indifference to [ Txiess I Lewis Beach wrote “J Goose Hangs High” five or strongly manufacture in that American literature Younger Generation occupied th the Like the it is rather out of dat Phe Young Generation has got to be a pretty stale subject. The bobbed-haired flapper, the Prince ton boy, vears ago. It sug period 6 when the center of stage. Dane play, the superior attitude of the young people toward their elders, and all the other ingredients of the hot min strel show cooled — off Uhere are puppy. love eral years have considerably. instances of intelligent observation in Beach's play, but we have seen and heard it all too often to be it nger enchanted by The production of the play marks the first effort of the newly organized Theater. Che Dramatists’ Theater plans to how the 1 Dramatists* s conclusively that they are not at all necessary. Phe Actors’ all know Equity Association has alr in the ady proved usively nstance of the Equity Players’ Theater. It is good to know that the dramat- ists are how proving it clusively all over again. con But I may be forgiven for noticing that that play, “The Way fails to pop. Twenty years ago. when Henry Arthur Jones's ° Mrs. Dane’s Defence” and pieces of a kidney were still held to be the cat's spats in the way of daring, the play that is currently on view in the Lyceum TI ‘To-day, Iping. there to give h sas the phr return for the document that will save her beaw from gaol, it chastity of stage heroines Clemence Dane ‘Things Happen,” created a considerable stir. young heroine, after Villain’s chambers, When the to the it misses fire. much kes herself doesn’t seem to make much difference to the audience one way or the other. And when her beau, learning of her sacrifice, gets sore and yells some very nasty remarks al her, sympathy somehow refractorily goes less to the T than to the beau. Things are not as they were, alas, in nas day or, for Mary waton, stepping a measure in “Kid Boots,” at the Earl Carroll Theater. ter would have the more these dif tions prove conclusively that the managers aren't at all necessary, the more conclusively it is evident from the different organizations’ efforts that they are. [doubt that an experienc sr would have produced this first play of the Dran Theater, (In point of fact, it is fairly s: assume that the play was generally turned down, oth for instance. wise there would have been no need for the dramatists chivalrously to band themselves together in order to produce it.) The experienced manager would have detected the play's staleness and, while perhaps able to recognize its few virtues, would have laid it aside in favor of a fresher work. An experi further, would hardly have cast Mr. Norman Trevor, an English actor with an accent like George Continued on page 2) reed manage icbooks.com