Judge — March 30, 1929 — page 28: what you’re looking at

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

RELIEF COMFORT cles in Wonder “T wish old Ginger "Icks "ud work round the other way—one 0” these days "ell be too much for my sense o° "umour!” Judging the Shows (Continued from page 20) Mr. Geddes has selected the subject of incest for his theme. A note in the program, printed in alarming italics—a quotation from Shelley's preface to "The Cenei”—thus warns the audience “There must be no attempt to make the exhibition subservient to what is vulgarly termed a moral purpose. The highest moral pur- pose aimed at in the highest spee- tacle of the drama is the reaching of the human heart, through its sympathies and antipathies, the knowlec of itself. If dog- mas can do more, it is well; but the drama is no fit place for the enforcement of them.” The audi- ence quite naturally keeps its cars pricked up for the descent of the but the M. Geddes fools them, he does. All that he ventures. is to hint, at the very end of his play, that papa doesn't always go where mama gocs. He is parently afraid of his them gets no nearer to couray quoting Shel incidenta ity of “The strikes me gf as presump- tuous as would be the quotation of Lincoln's Gettysburg address over a demolished speakeasy. cops That quotation, in view of the qual Earth Between,” as | Lawrence’s “ Conflict” Is with a heroic aviator who, once the war is over, tries vainly to readjust himself to the pe time environment. The author has written a play that creaks like a frame house in a blizzard, but he has contrived, as I have already noted, a character in the person of the aviator that comes close to reality. Admir- —Tatirn ably this ¢ played by Spencer Tracy, ter shows a high grad: of sympathetic observation and sharp understand There it is quick and alive. is also a meas ure of sagacity in the drawing of the character of a mu nt sery and of the young woman whom the aviator takes to wife, In these directions, Lawrence has done a meritorious job, But his play as a whole is rickety, confused and often misinformed as to social psychology and action. >, it has its moments of cheap hokum as. for example, the episode wherein the American hero and his lordly German prisoner mag nanimously pull a lot. of stuff, vertheless, Lawrence has an eye to character that is valuable. He is eral run of Broadway seriveners. In addition to Tracy, good per- formances are tributed by Frank McHugh, orge Meeker, Seth Arnold, Albert van Dekker and Miss Pe Allenby, and two prosit ove the gen- pretty sour ones by Edward Arnold and the Mile. Dennie Moore. He—I am burning with love for you, Sie—Oh, don't make a fuel of yourself. Evervnopy’s Wrekry comicbooks.com