Judge, 1925-10-10 · page 18 of 37
Judge — October 10, 1925 — page 18: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a theatrical drama criticism in Judge magazine's satirical style. Nathan reviews Michael Arlen's play "The Green Hat," comparing it unfavorably to the 19th-century playwright Arthur Wing Pinero. Nathan's critique argues that while Arlen's work enjoys commercial success among "polished yokels," it achieves this through superficial tricks: placing a conventional sex story in wealthy settings (Lake Como, the Albany club) and giving characters aristocratic names (Major General Sir Maurice Harpenden) and affected dialogue that mimics both high poetry and pretentious conversation. The cartoons illustrate Nathan's point mockingly—characters discuss the play while embodying its shallow glamour and affected speech. The second section references a hotel manager's letter questioning whether Nathan ever praises anything, allowing Nathan to defend his critical standards while grudgingly commending the Anderson-Stallings play "First Flight" for possessing some artistic merit despite its limitations. The satire targets both Arlen's melodramatic play and the audiences susceptible to its packaging of mediocrity as sophistication.
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Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
HAIR-PINERO by George Jean Nathan I HE Irises, Napiers and Hil- I arys of Michael Arlen’s “Green Hat” take us back to the days of Pinero with their gaudy amours at Lake Como, their monkey business in gentle- men’s chambers at the Albany, their guinea pig heroines, movie actor lovers and pseudo _philo- sophical raisonneurs. But it is a feminate Pinero that Arlen gives us, a Pinero that, for all its bull roaring, has about it a suspicion - of nose powder. The sex of “The Green Hat” doesn’t quite convince; it is rubbed in with too loud colors; one hearkens to it with the dubious smile with which one listens to a barber recounting his Casanovan prowess among the biddies at Coney Island. It is, in short, sex so melodramatized that it misses all conviction and soon finds itself wandering into the burlesque pre- cincts of Herman Krausmeyer and Co. Arlen’s play, like his fiction in book covers, is a great success. And, as is the case with certain other successful poor plays, the reason isn’t hard to figure out, Arlen is privy to the generally profitable boob- bumping trick of taking an ordinary sex story and putting it over on the susceptibles as something very hotsy-totsy by the simple device of laying it in tony surroundings, giving the characters such shes 4 vey oF neH Bed.” "COLIN «SIE GET A LOVER, Hi doggy names as Major General Sir Maurice Harpenden, Bart., and causing them to use a species of language that is a cross between the poetry of Cale Young Rice and the dinner- table conversation of an over-educated coon. Such stuff usually makes a deep im- pression upon our __ polished yokels. “The Green Hat,” in- deed, looks as if it were making an impression deep enough to keep it going in New York until gin goes back to $30 a case. Katharine Cornell is admirable as the morally careless heroine. FEw weeks ago, there was printed in the cor- respondence column of this great journal of the uplift a letter from Mr. Leslie W. Hayes, office manager of the Wentworth Hotel, Portsmouth, N. H., in which the gent in point delivered himself of the following sassiness: “Does George Jean Nathan ever praise or commend a show? Is he ever pleased or satisfied?” The answerto,the somewhat sarcastic Mons. Hayes is yes. George Jean Nathan is glad to prai: commend the new Anderson-Stallings play, “ Flight,” though he must confess that while it pleases him a lot it doesn’t entirely satisfy him. It pleases him because of its measure of beauty and its measure of adroit romantic prose; it failsto satisfy him because (Continued on page 26) comicbooks.com