Judge — June 28, 1930 — page 20: what you’re looking at

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

Svuicipe—My gosh—they'll kill me for this if they ever catch me! JUDGE , SUDGING““ BOOKS Miss Parker Plays Hamlet; ete. and darker. » she whose heart Bo: it grows darker Dorothy Parke has been breaking (at so much a line) to fall backward poetry has been for the unluck whose roundh ochistic perfe y at love aneedotes don’t bear repeating in ni company; whose crack that Carl Van Vechten wrote with his tongue in some- one else's cheek, touched the burning heart of something or other; whose vir- tues seemed a merger of Shaw's, Lil- ith’s, Byron's, and Gallant well boys, this same Dorothy has her clay foot. She is he moted from the inhuman to the merely human, Fox’s— This astounding conclusion has ar- rived with a reading of her “Laments for the Living,” a slim book of fine- chiseled prose reprints, Retrospection t in, our judgments of her rer. It would seem that un- der all her terribleness of tongue, her superior sophistication, she is the lady clown suffering from a bad case of thwarted Milne. We had thought her a goddess pable of the love of a super-Shelley (if she could get it). She turns out to be a sort of inverted Sara Teasdale given to unhappy endir and a telephone complex. Nobody with an eye towards heaven could possibly write a story like “Mr. It is the one about the Lit- Stenog put in a big way by the assistant boss: added to The Wor Always Pay: series. “Little Curtis” is a syrupy dose of maudlin pity for Little Orphan Curtis who was adopted by the Cruel Old Witch from Brooklyn, It actually contains a scene in which Curtis is beaten with an old dancing slipper branded “Kumfy-Toes.” Shades of Cecil B. De Mille! Who was it said that irony could be as ham as humor? This doesn’t go for “Big Blonde,” the most mature and original in the batch. This bathetic comedy of a dull ch's heartburns ranks with H nd Callaghan. It is as def ist as a Phillies ballplayer and will live as long as most speakeasy tragedy. Of course, when Mrs. Parker plays with humor she goes right to the head of the class. Her “Mantle of Whistler,” “Just a Little One and “The Sexes” prove the superiority of her laugh over her dry sniffle. Here her unusual qualities are fully in evi- 18 dence and work as smoothly as an electric engine. Don't think we're decrying the soft of heart. But pity is different from self-pity, and when Dotty, growing stuffy of soul, attires herself in various pitying, theatrie disguises, we grow uncomfortable and cry “No fair punching in the heart.” knows what'll become of Heavens her in her » if she doesn't drown out the and concentrate on her laughs. Heavens knows what'll be- of her in any public problem, Those who have read Sid Lenz's previous books realize not only that he knows whereof he speaks but that he writes so that one may understand. His new book on Contract is the real Me nthe game, from the elements of bidding to the niceties of interpret- ing the rules. case. She's a The only trouble of associating in the same office with the maestro. is that one cannot win money from him. What you can do to the others, how- ever, by using his system is another novel. Of one thing we're sure: Gabriel may play the last trumpet but Mons. Lenz will play the last trump. Mare Connelly’s play “Green Pas- tures” is in book form and is a pleas- ing shorthand version of Roark Brad- ford’s original, The Kaufman-Lard- ner “June Moon” has the funniest lines and stage directions of the season and provides added (idle) amusement the form of trying to pick out which of the collaborators was responsible for which lines; Chekhov's “Uncle Vanya,” ably translated by Rose Cay- lor, left us with the wonderment, what was it all about?; while they have brought out “Lysistrata,” the “bawdy” farce, at several dollars the copy. My! we can remember the centuries it has rested unread on library shelves—ex- cept for a few boning freshmen, And now the public will eat it up, having discovered somethin: Well, we have our horselaughs, we guides to the bet- ter things in life, we do, Attempted — Bloodies: “Murder in Paris” dollar books. profiteering. Campbell's is the first of the The publishers are still Loder’s “Shop Window Tyson's “Rhododendron Man”; and Landon’s “Voice in the Closet” were not for —Tep Sitane comicbooks.com