Life — June 16, 1927 — page 21: what you’re looking at

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

Three Modest Successes HAT exciting event in journalism, this department's Big Annual Review of the Season, is about due, but the time does not seem quite ripe for it yet. Several readers have written in asking that we postpone it until that week when, either through changing their addresses for the summer or sailing across the ocean, they are most likely to miss seeing Lire. “If there is one thing that I want to miss more than another,” writes Doubt- ful Admirer, “it is your annual summary of the season. Try to run it in the issue of July 7. I shall be in the Maine woods then.” This article, therefore, will technically not be the Summary of the Season, although it will have some of the distinctive features of that institution. It will smack of analysis. It will be, in a small way, a review. But it will not be our last word in summarization. We are saving that until later in order not to detract any from the public interest in Captain Lindbergh. WEG EAS UT there is one phase of the past season which we will take up now, a phenomenon which calls for comment and analysis. We refer to the quiet and un- ostentatious success of several plays which received hardly any notice at all when they opened and have at- tracted little or no attention since. They have been on no lists of Plays Which Should Be Seen and it is doubt- ful that any ticket agencies other than the cut-rates have handled their seats. And yet, of the six legitimate plays enjoying the longest runs of the season, three were of this lowly class. They may not have made much money, but they kept going. “Two Girls Wanted” has had, to date, a longer run than “Broad- way” by one week, and “The Squall” and “Gertie,” with the assistance of the cut-rates, have plugged along amusing a great many people for a great many weeks. We now come to the big question—“Why?” ~ ~- 5 ~ HERE is no reason why “Two Girls Wanted” shouldn't have kad a long run. Miss Unger has written a very pleasant little comedy, with a great many elements of popular success in it, and Winchell Smith has cast it and directed it very wisely—as usual. If one factor more than another has been responsible for word-of-mouth boosting of the play, however, it is prob- ably the unique comedy methods of Miss Nydia West- man. Doubtless through having heard countless matinee audiences exclaim with glee over her engaging little squeak and pigeon-toed walk, Miss Westman is now using them to the exclusion of anything else, but they are unquestionably what has made “Two Girls Wanted” different from the dozens of comedies exactly like it in other respects. Mary Phillips’ performance as the inhibited secretary is a much more delicate piece of work—among the season’s best—but the fact that the audience laughs at her farewell to her canary and at several other moments of really fine pathos simply because she wears glasses and is a comedy type explains in spart why these same audiences supported “Two Girls Wanted” and let “White Wings” die. It is significant that, in a season touted far and wide for its impurity, this comedy with the longest run is as clean as Maximilian’s tooth. (Maximilian was an old hound we used to have.) = S for “Gertie,” which, although it has been living on nothing at all, has undeniably kept alive since November 15, the only explanation is that it, too, has the elements of popular appeal, chiefly for cut-rate audiences. It will be remembered that it was the cut- rate agencies which kept “Abie’s Irish Rose” alive for many weeks while we were congratulating ourself that we were stamping it out, and there is no good reason why “Gertie” should not run five years too. It has Christmas wreaths in the windows of the opening scene. The landlady hits a man with a broom when he is stoop- ing over to look under the bed. The rich young man intimates to the heroine that marriage is not necessary for his purposes and she slaps his face. And the poor young man in overalls comes through clean in the end. There is also a great deal of Irish landlady talk. Five years would be a conservative estimate of ‘“Gertie’s” potential popularity with cut-rate audiences. Add to this a good performance of the title réle by Constance McKay, and we need wonder no more about this one. It, too, violates all standards of popular taste by be- ing practically immaculate. HE only one of the three to be tainted with intima- tions of sex is “The Squall.” Here again the Leblang audiences have rallied to the defense pf a play which was scorned by the elders of the people. It is true that Blanche Yurka’s presence lifts it out of the class of typical cut-rate drama, but “The Squall” is essentially birdseed. Thus we have three unostentatious successes of the 1926-27 season, two of them clean and one depending on the Demon Sex for its interest. From this analysis we may deduce that summer begins officially on June 21. Robert Benchley. comicbooks.com