Life — December 29, 1927 — page 23: what you’re looking at

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

The Perils of Friendship HERE are eighteen new plays scheduled for the week can, even by employing our old magic carpet, see only eight a week at most. We may just sulk and see none of them. At present, however (the week before Christmas), we have no other course open to us than merely to list them after Christmas alone, and we on the opposite page and write “to be reviewed later” after each one. We now take a savage delight in writing “to be reviewed later’ because we know how much it irritates a lot of stupid people. To be reviewed later— to be reviewed later—to be reviewed later—to be re viewed later. And go and take a jump in the lake for yourself if you don't like it! ER UW WS do wish, however, that our personal friends would stop writing plays. Not that aren't always strictly impartial and as cold as ice in our attitude toward our work, but we hate to keep losing personal friends. Within the next two weeks no fewer than three of our most valued comrades will have entered town with offerings for the holiday trade, while we have every expectation of being able to say in all sincerity that they set a high-water mark for the drama in America, it is a little nerve-racking on opening nights. Our attitude toward Mr. Sherwood’s “The Love Nest” will be further complicated by the fact that he is our And we owe money to Donald Ogden Stewart, who (with Max Marcin) is due in with “Los Angeles.” (Not much money—just that little matter in connection with the Harvard-Yale game, but something we would prefer to let slide until the hockey-season is over.) Philip Barry's “Paris Bound” is the only one of the three that we ations of policy at stake, and Mr. Barry is such a nice person that the situation is practically as tense as in the other Mr. Sherwood and Mr. Stewart are Dear, dear, it is all very complicated ! W E we and an face without certain consid cases. nice, too. Se ap wee wee Soe ap Orr great heart got us into further worries this week when, at the suggestion of the producers of “The Command to Love” (the Messrs. Brady, Wiman and Tuerk, three as charming fellows as you would care to know), we gave in and went to see it again. If you remember the lectures in this course at all you will recollect that we didn’t like “The Command to Lov when we saw it first, but. under stress of an impending censorship, certain changes have been made in it, and it was these that we were invited to inspect Oddly enough, the change in the second act, made to reduce the boiling-point of the play, has actually intro duced a of subtlety which was entirely lacking before and has made the character of Manucla much more worthy of Mr. Rathbone’s delicate Our main objection to the first version was that Miss Nash had to make the alacrity and such vigorous relish. As it stands now, she walks out on the party entirely and, although you are given to understand that it won't be le theless, a note of generalship and humor about the thing which makes quite a new play of it We still, however, would like people in the audience who gig in which they note attentions. supreme sacrifice with such now, there is, never the way to shoot most of It must be the gig: \ JE. might also take this chance to say that in Mr. Buck's sightly production, “Take the Air’ (and what a swell guy Mr. Buck is, too!), you will find one of the funniest comedians now at work—Mr. Will Mahoney. (We Mr. Mahoney He has been making people laugh in vaudeville for years, using no make-up except a blue double-breasted suit, a bow tie and a derby hat, and he ought to make patrons of “Take the Air” laugh equally hard. Try to make a list of the really funny men in musical comedy to-day and you will see what a stroke of genius it was for Mr. Buck (Hi, Gene! ) to pick Mr. Mahoney. Gene have never even met ny UR very good friend Basil Sydney (together with sev- eral dozen other people whom we don't know so well) has pointed out to us a horrifying slip of the type- writer made by us week before last when we spoke of “Hamlet” in modern dress that it was Mr. Sydney himself who played “Hamlet” in modern dress and it was just one of those inexplicable things that made us write “John Barry- more,” just as Mr. Krutch of the Nation referred to Constance Collier a few weeks ago as Margaret Anglin. We hope that neither Mr. Barrymore nor Mr. Sydney (nor, for that matter, Miss Anglin) is offended by this explanation, for we know them all and wouldn't embarrass them for the world rs it very hard, this having friends in the John Barrymore's playing We kne personally Tt ma business. Robert Benchley comicbooks.com