Life, 1928-01-26 · page 21 of 34
Life — January 26, 1928 — page 21: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a theater review of Eugene O'Neill's *Marco Millions*. The critic praises the production's quality but argues O'Neill's satire has become outdated and conventional. The piece attacks the "Babbitt" stereotype — the philistine American businessman — which had become such an easy target by the 1920s that defending the Babbitt seemed almost necessary. The critic notes O'Neill wasn't pioneering this attack even when he wrote the play. The review then pivots to broader cultural criticism: Americans have spent ten years debunking American life through theater and journalism, exposing publicity stunts behind popular "heroes." Recent plays like *Celebrity* (by Willard Keefe) and *Bless You, Sister* reveal how the media manufactures celebrity personas. The underlying point: satire of materialistic, status-seeking Americans had become so prevalent and predictable that it lost satirical bite. The critique ironically suggests joining an "Anti-Babbitt Club" while acknowledging the Babbitt deserves defense against such worn-out attacks.
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Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
The Prevalent Scoffing 1 Bat us go on record right at the start by stating that the Theatre Guild’s production of Eugene O'Neill's ‘arco Millions” is a fine thing to have done. And to estimate it by the same standard as the average dramatic offering would be to deserve only the average dramatic offering from now on. Here is something in a class by itself. And, judged as a production, in scenery, costuming, direction and acting (or, to be personal, the work of Lee Simonson, Rouben Mamoulian, Alfred Lunt, Margalo Gillmore, Baliol Holloway, Dudley Digges and the rest), it is a splendid thing according to any standard. As for Mr. O'Neill's contribution, the chief trouble is that it was written so long ago. As satire it has become almost banal, owing to the fact that in the past two years the Babbitt and Go-Getter has been the target for almost any one with a drop of acid in his ink, Even when Mr. O'Neill wrote “Marco Millions” he was not a pioneer in the attack. Now he is simply telling an old wives’ tale. O conventional has become O’Neill’s anti-Babbitt satire since it was written that any one with a satirical turn of mind now would be tempted to defend the Babbitt. Under what obligation, esthetic, philo- sophical or otherwise, was Marco Polo to fall in love with the Princess? She, in her own lovely way, must have been pretty trying on that two-years’ voyage. That he preferred his plump, middle-class Donata may have indicated a certain dullness in his taste, but even philoso- phers and poets, from Socrates on, have not always carried their esthetic standards into their choice of women. Certainly, by refusing to make passes at his fair charge, he did not lay himself open to the dire punishment which the Great Kaan wished for him. And, if Marco was overly concerned with the acquisition of gold and its luxuries, we did not notice the Great Kaan himself rushing out into the kitchen to wash any of his golden dishes after supper. He and his staff philoso- phers could ignore the crass materials of life, because he had no fewer than four hundred servants to attend to those details for him. The consolations of philosophy and a fine scorn for acquisitiveness come much easier when you are the Ruler of the World yourself. ean Bet all this is a small part of a subject which is going to need a lot of going-into in the next few years, even if we have to resign from our charter-mem- Its connec- bership in the Anti-Babbitt Club to do it. tion with this article lies in the tardiness of Mr. O’Neill’s satire. And all of it has nothing at all to do with the fact that ‘Marco Millions” is written with a splendor and sweep which no other writer on the subject has achieved, and is produced with a fitting reverence. MEG Fog AS a part of the general campaign to de-bunk Amer- ican life which began ten years ago with the timid attack on the Go-Getter, we are now having a salutary series of disclosures in the field of newspaper publicity. We are being shown the wheels in the machine which makes our popular heroes, and if enough people keep on going to the theatre, it will soon be so that each per- sonality story in our press will have to be accompanied by a notary’s statement that it docs not emanate from a press-agent or no one will believe it. The two latest show-ups of publicity bunk are Willard ’ in which the straw is pulled out of the figure of the intellectual prizefighter whose mother is his best pal, and “Bless You, Sister,” by John Meehan and Robert Riskin, in which Alice Brady plays the lady evangelist whose bark is a bit more scriptural than her bite. Both are worth seeing. “Celebrity” is the more amusing, but is none the less searching. a, So ae HE chief trouble that we found with “Bless You, Sister” was that, when Miss Brady stood on the rostrum and, to the accompaniment of an evangelical quartette singing “Face to Face,” exhorted her audience to consider their souls, we felt the old Moody and Sankey influence stirring within us so strongly that, al- though we knew that the scene was bitterly satirical, we had to leave the theatre to keep from raising our hand and rushing down the aisle to join the brethren and sis- tren for a good day's work in the vineyard of the Lord. We are very susceptible to exhortation, especially if accompanied by a quartette singing “Face to Face.” Which is why, in self-defense, we have become the nasty old cynic that we are. EA el Set Just as we thought that we had all our personal friends’ plays cleaned up, in pops our Mr. Sherwood again with “The Queen’s Husband” and Mr. Barry with “Cock Robin.” It sometimes seems as if they were just doing it to be troublesome. Oh, well—to be reviewed next week. Robert Benchley. comicbooks.com