Judge, 1925-10-17 · page 20 of 42
Judge — October 17, 1925 — page 20: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This theater criticism column contrasts two Broadway shows. Nathan reviews "The Pelican," an old-fashioned English melodrama featuring hackneyed plot devices: a wrongly-suspected heroine, separation, a hidden child revealed by a locket, and overwrought "Mother Love" reconciliation. He satirizes its absurdity—including a twenty-year gap between acts and a Chewing Gum advertisement on the curtain. Nathan positions "Sunny," a new musical comedy by Dillingham, as the antidote—lighter relief from such tired dramatics. He credits composer Jerome Kern's catchy tunes and performer Marilyn Miller's dancing as superior entertainment to the Harwoods' stale dialogue. The cartoons illustrate these contrasting theatrical styles: melodramatic confrontations versus comedic lightness. Nathan's point: audiences need contemporary musical comedy to escape recycled Victorian dramatic formulas.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
ANTIDOTES by George Jean Nathan I night. “The Pelican” belongs to the school of drama that gave women red noses back in McKinley’s time. You remember the brand. In Act I, the heroine, suspected by her hus- band, Lord Basil *A FeLov Wrote MEA LETIER SHING HED SHaT ME We I Dont keeP AvAyY “From His wire. 'M eran!" _ . iT Yad Kt WAY eons Sipe?” *—Ye DONT WS Naeie-/” SP peO WILD *WNGES™ KRAET_KRACKS s sel To MUSIC - s€ unny,” the new Dillingham musical show, is a great antidote to “The Pelican,” the English drama that was brought into New York on the preceding ce)" Balderdash, of faithless- ness, was driven out of the old manor house. Twenty years elapsed between Acts I and II and, when the curtain with the Yucatan Chew- ing Gum advertisement on it went up again, the heroine was seen to have changed her blond wig for a white one—and the child had been born. Three weeks elapsed be- fore the next act got under way. Sir Basil, unaware that he was a papa, now encountered his son in the drawing-room of General Sir Hilary Hoopdedoodle’s house in Upper Grosvenor street and recognized him, by the locket he wore at his breast, as his own. The last act showed Mother Love violently chasing itself around the stage and the final curtain came down on a grand free-for-all reconciliation. Well, it’s all here once again in “The Pelican.” Only the locket is missing. The dialogue that accompanies this superannu- ated fable sticks pretty close to the old formula. Here and there, Mr. and Mrs. Harwood, the authors, have brushed some of the dust off it, but a thick layer is still visible. And that is why I say that “Sunny,” playing across the street, is just what you need to make you happy again. Jerome Kern’s tunes have three times as much drama and kick in them as the Harwoods’ dialogue; Marilyn - Miller’s legs are worth all the Mother Love since (Continued on page 30) b Y “\TWINK YOURE A SPY- YOURE HIDING SOMETHING FROM ME/“” comicbooks.com