Judge — August 1934 — page 14: what you’re looking at

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

Judge THE dramatic only hot-dog star known as HE com summer theatres are presently in profuse bloom throughout the eastern Amer can countryside. I haven't the exact figures at hand, but a perusal of the newspapers indicates that in almost every rur section boasting ing } I ) more than one find at least one s Muse. The great mz of these shrines, as reader started station w will s} jority pump you wayside ne to is already sufficiently aware, wt in life ne s playhouses but as residences of cows, roller-skating rinks, town halls, manure sheds, s. or something equally alien he purple a yck and buskin. heir wholesale conversion b ahout three years Wholesale re-conversion —w likelihood begin about three ye It isn will not fi the t. here and done such little s theatre that serves a purpose other th eratifying the vanity of seme young man who imagines himself € nously gifted in the craft of pro- ‘ on and sta rection and who ’ been able to get by the tely critical office-boys of the York managers. It is, rather, “ le utres—and by far most—are simply jitney repeti- tie f the more jitney Broadway without rhyn scheme of things re So far as ima and so are or nation, experimentation or fresh udgment goes. they are dead from the neck up. They are merely in- effectual little cuckoos of the parrot < of Broadway. They discover ing genuine in the way of play- ng talent, directorial talent, or ting talent. They believe that they deserve their place in the sun if they so much as uncover, in combination, a few second-rate plays by third-rate hacks that subsequently get some money at the New York box-office. They strive neither courageously nor of George vut rest content to be so many mimics of How, they then, di age to persist be- cause their operators succeed in horn- swo: alot of poor your sniff of g actors, starved for fresh country air, to sweat through the summer eeks at Chinese coolie wages: be- tl e operators make ¢ low of trying out in- erior playwrig nity in lieu r and because the r s exhaust the little film house pre ms ed but twice a week) two and seem to have nothing bett » do on another week the converted n to patronize } louse, it orse vrious and well appreciated arth is so ningly e country for lo’ (Which, incidentally, seem to have ove bottom for discontent on with their lot.) ide in the neigh tle summer theatres ave to answer to their they well-being of the art of They applaud the worst ie rubbish: they g brand of and leless e sins commit t slovenly ycktail and them what wonder- they invite the ¢ theatres to the cou em their portant Stanislavski, Dantchenko Reinhardt; they e€ teas actors y are: opinions of and tter, grease, oil and gush until the poor idiots of nd producers id themselves wows of and in the autumn de- New York and bumptious in their self-unrecognized but painfully incompetence. As has been noted, not all of the actors, My i the first cz scend upon brave obvious 12 THEATRE Jean Nathan summer show-shops are such affronts vl honor, The few with elements to recommend them, These deserve to live and pros per. But in the regate the out houses of Thespis contrive to do in- finitely more harm tha od. They iscourage, with their amateurish productions, cheap taste and trivial plays, winter attendance upon the reputable professional theatre the neighbor untry custeni though they figure it out that way ly not” temporarily to themselve unquestionably discover—when they take stock of their senses at the end of the summer—that the country theatre w aiter all, pr factory a confus ter pr at they've 1} re with the wir conclue kin theatre, enough of any theatre for of months t e. If, even witl other faults the small summer theatres served soundly as experimental stages for possibly worth-while plays and acted as intelligent la r the New York theatre. find sym- pathy at the hands m. But look at their record last year. Out of approximately new manuscripts that they tried out. what was the rel tive amount of wheat (if you can call it that) to cl The only new plays us tried out that subsequently got anywhere on Broadway were “The rsuit of Happiness,” a box-office omedy of utterly no critical vortance. “Double Door.” a tin-pot . and “No More Ladies, second-rate, if here and there fairly amusing, comedy. The various others that were brought to the New York stage were all trash, And the st: ous were even less fortur number of and were all failures. isties for the vear previ- ate. Out of plays tried out then, three and only three were deemed fit for New York audiences. And the (Page 24, please) any comicbooks.com