Judge — February 20, 1932 — page 18: what you’re looking at

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

ore THE rem weeks ago there was. pro duced in the Spielhaus Masque something called “The House of Doom”. It proved to be what is in all probability the worst play of the twentieth century and at the same time one of the most hugely enjoyable evenings that [have experienced in a theatre since the production, nine or ten years ago, of that magnificent runner-up known as “Love's Call”, “Love's Call”, as connoisseurs of the rich and juiey will remember, marked the height of unintentional dramatic humor in its da voluptuous that at ten manager of the theatre ying, coming in from the box-office look at the house and seeing all the seats empty, was on the point of ringing down the curtain and dis- missing the actors when it occurred to him to look noand when he dis- covered that the seats were empty for the simple reason that the wh: di- ence had rolled off them into the aisles from excessive laughter. Until the noof “The House of Doom’. e's Call” held the diamond belt, the ruby-encrusted gold medal, the cloisonné beer nd the Grand Cross of the Order of St. Gustav for preéminence in its field. hing like it, nothing even notely resembling it, in a theatre since the s when it was the mode for the young gentlemen in the gallery to drop lighted cigar butts and peanut bags filled with on the heads of the snobs in the boxes. But with the advent of “The House of Doom’, “Love's Call” became only a beautiful. sentimental memory. Indeed, all things considered, “Love's Call” doesn’t now, on reflection, seem to have been so damned bad. Maybe we 1 mistaken about it. But there can be no mistake about “The House of Doom", As a play, it may have been—in solemn —superb, dazzling and unj tripe, but as a low show for the ence it hasn't been beaten in th tory of the Ameri a humor so td been seen tre of our JUDGE time. There is, it seems to me - tain hypocrisy on the part of the re- viewers when they truthfully an- nounce such stuff as rubbish, yet in the same breath imply that there is ab- solutely no amusement to be derived from it and so dispatch it to the storchouse before a public starved for ood, loud, belly-busting laughter can il itself of it. There is, paradoxi- cally. more honest, genuine, 22-karat, all-wool amusement to be derived from such a show than from nine-tenths of the numerous relatively very much better shows put on in a season. The trouble with so many of these other shows is that. while they are undeni- ably bad, they aren't bad enough, As onsequence, they simply. and prop- erly, bore an audience to death, But when a show reaches the very edel- weiss of b s in the case of ‘Lit is a differ ent story. ‘The thing becomes a phe- nomenon and, as such, productive of a vast and boozy entertainment, like James Owen O'Connor's “Hamlet” with the waiters in the beer gardens around New York and New Jersey where he played it passing about with und. y 1 Buy your eggs and garden truck now—O'Connor’s next!" (the eminent Prof. Dr. Frank Ellsworth Hatch, of Boston, is reputed to have spent $875 on tomatoes alone)—or like the Cher- ry Sisters or a new play by the Hat- ness, he House of Door haskets of eggs tons, It is, as I have noted, simon-pure critical snobbery for the reviewers to pretend that a show such as the late lamented isn’t grand pastiine. People go to the theatre to be amused in one way or another and, if they craved amusement, here it was, and ho audience that I have laid eves on in years has had such a swell time with itself. When the ous scientist injected dog blood into the hero and turned him int scivious Schnauser, such a istic barking was set up by the ribald customers that it seemed there wouldn't be enough telegraph poles and lamp-posts te go around in the intermission, When the sen- THEATRE of George Jean Nathan timental young swain stroked — his beloved’s eyebrow and — wistfully dreamed of the day when they would h. little white house in the coun- try with roses growing over the door and kiddies pla on the lawn,” the love-sick sighing of the folks out front took on the volume of ten generations of Bing Crosbys ed by the Vatic “Riss Me Again” in counterpoint. When the sinister Hindu, Buddha = Abdullah Kahn. wishing to get the hero in his power, not only hypnotized him. but put a cloth soaked) in’ chlor over his. fs dothen gave him a shot of morphine with a hypodermic needle to boot, the audience let out such a series of yells that the M. Perey Hammond. of the Merald-Tribune, thinking he was back on the gridiron \ playing for dear old Franklin, uted a brilliant flying tackle and knocked the M. Gilbert Gabriel, of the -American, out of his seat onto the floor. while the M. John Mason Brown, of the Post, under r but wholly understandable delusion, promptly turned his t inside out and started to do a victorious snake dance up and down the aisle. And when Charles K. Champlin, who not only wrote the show but beque Jekyll-Hyde rol : Champlin, suddenly dropped behind nd. minutes, arose ina green light and in cup that was a cross between a ce and the wall-paper in an n restaurant, the while ut- shricks by way of in nl that had transforma »pened, such was the detonating mirth that’ Ed Wynn came running hot-foot from his theatre across the street te see what it was that going te business. I haven't told you the half of it But I hope that [ve told you enough to make you regret missing the time of your life. It will be many fore such an opportu (Page 32, please) n choir rm come tion—w ruin his | | comicbooks.com