1942: Drama

Short Run Plays.

A year in which war-minded Americans tried not to waste money on non-essentials, saw the usual number of gamblers risking thousands of dollars on dramatic productions which collapsed almost before playgoers had become aware of their existence. There were nearly fifty such failures in 1942. Comes the Revelation opened on May 26 and closed on May 27. An ill-starred revival of The Time, The Place, and The Girl, failed to bridge the gap in taste between 1907 and 1942, and gave up after a ten-day struggle. A memorable success of former seasons, Capek's R.U.R. was given two days' grace. The lovely Mexican patio which Donald Oenslager designed for Marc Connelly's The Flowers of Virtue went into storage after two or three performances, and Stuart Erwin's delightful playing of the postman who turns into a tree kept the Theater Guild's Mr. Sycamore alive for a fortnight. Of the rest, it need only be said that with few exceptions oblivion was deserved.

Popular Successes.

At the opposite pole of popularity were the customary few productions which, by some happy combination of writing, acting and producing talents, drew audiences month after month. Chronologically, the list begins with plays held over from earlier seasons: Life with Father, going into its fourth year; My Sister Eileen; Arsenic and Old Lace; Lady in the Dark; the perennial show-on-skates, currently entitled Stars on Ice; Noel Coward's light-fingered Blithe Spirit; Junior Miss; Sons o' Fun; Angel Street; and Danny Kaye's sprightly vehicle, Let's Face It! The Spring of 1942 saw Watch on the Rhine close after nearly a year's run, and Claudia after thirteen months. Not quite so sturdy were Best Foot Forward (nine months), Spring Again (seven months), Eddie Cantor's Banjo Eyes (six months), and Sophie Tucker's raucous High Kickers (five months). From eight to twelve weeks were all that Broadway allowed to three comparatively distinguished plays: Candle In the Wind, Brooklyn, U. S. A., and Clash By Night. The stirring Macbeth of Maurice Evans and Judith Anderson played from November 1941, to the end of February 1942.

Effect of War on the Theater.

Whoever chronicles the year 1942 in our theater must answer these questions: did the twelvemonth when Americans' first thought was to defeat Fascism profoundly change the tone of Broadway? Did peace-time reluctance to mingle 'propaganda' with 'art' give way in order that great issues and heroic achievements be dramatized? Did the deeply moving cinema re-enactment of Wake Island find its counterpart on our stages? Did a People's War produce a People's Dramatist?

An art regarded by its practitioners and its public in peacetime as a means of recreation, and only rarely as a medium for treating serious things seriously, could scarcely be expected to revolutionize itself the morning after Pearl Harbor. The play or show that 'makes one forget one's troubles' continued through this first war year to be the most favored type of drama. Continued also was the habit of reviving old successes in the hope of recapturing success; continued was the vogue of the lush musical upon which, in America, converge so many and so fresh musical, designing and acting talents. Continuous was the making of unpretentious, semi-serious pieces of ingenious plot or flavorsome characters. The war served as background in some instances for actions built on conventional patterns; in other cases it provided topical humor for vaudevillesque productions; in a few plays, heroism of the stay-at-home type gave what backbone they possessed. There was one full-fledged Army show. There were a few authors like John Steinbeck and Maxwell Anderson who genuinely rose to the occasion. And it is to be gratefully recorded that the mawkishness of patriotic theatre, during the last war has not re-appeared in the present one.

Original humor and the high spirits of young performers marked Of V We Sing, produced by the American Youth Theater, in which Phil Leeds revealed himself a promising comedian. This Is the Army relied on the more mature skill of Irving Berlin, its only civilian performer, and a group of former professional theatre talents now in khaki, to build a rousing show whose most popular hit was a throwback, — Oh How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning. It was produced under the auspices of the U. S. Army, for the benefit of the Army Relief Fund.

Josephine Bentham and Herschel Williams wrote Janie around the farce situation of a young miss who organizes a party for soldiers, and becomes hostess to sixty of them at once. The war was even more incidental to Strip for Action, in which a broken-down burlesque troupe tries to entertain the boys in an army camp. Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse, co-authors of Life with Father, managed to satirize burlesque while treating their audience to all the lusty pleasures of burlesque itself. Raymond Sovey designed the scenery, and two old-timers of the strip-tease circuit gave it authentic and robustly comic flavor: Billy Koud, a veteran dance director, who played himself, and Joey Faye, the burlesque clown incarnate. Let Freedom Sing, a second venture by the American Youth Theater, with Mitzi Green as guest star, had as its chief asset the witty songs of Harold Rome.

George S. Kauffman staged another fast-and-furious knockabout farce by the author of My Sister Eileen and Junior Miss, Joseph Fields. A mad assortment of Washington hotel-dwellers, including a Russian girl sniper, fire-cracker dialogue and uproarious situations guaranteed a third 'smash' success for Mr. Fields in The Doughgirls.

Doodle Dandy of the U.S.A. was a harlequinade for children; its title character foiled Humphey Dumphrey the dictator in scenes whose imagination and light humor had current meaning; the piece was written by Saul Lancourt, with music by Elsie Siegmeister and dances by Ted Shawn.

The grimmer aspects of warfare appeared in a group of plays, of which three Gilbert Miller productions may be considered typical. The first was Heart of a City, in which Lesley Storm dramatized the play-must-go-on attitude of a theatrical troupe in blitzed London. Its run was short, as was the engagement of Miller's second effort, Lifeline, by Norman Armstrong. This time the heroism was that of the British Merchant Marine, and Dudley Digges headed a competent cast. In December, Miller tried once more with Terence Rattigan's Flare Path, and once more failed. Gladys Hurlbut, who wrote Yankee Point, presented a New England family facing an enemy invasion, but did so rather lifelessly, as audiences soon discovered. Received with like indifference, despite expert direction by Guthrie McClintic and scenery by Stewart Chaney, was The Morning Star, Emlyn Williams' play about Londoners under bombardment, a synthetic and shallow piece.

Only four American playwrights in 1942 approached the war with a sense of its urgency, its human complexity, its challenge to the wisdom and creative powers of the artist. Two were established writers, Steinbeck and Maxwell Anderson; two were young men, Dan James and Allan Kenward. Steinbeck's The Moon Is Down met critical antagonism because its Nazi soldiers were not in all respects the antithesis of their victims in a nameless small town in the north of Europe; the German Colonel, played by Otto Kruger, knew his Greek philosophers, performed his brutal task with distaste, and so shared the audience's sympathy with the quietly heroic Mayor, acted with great skill by Ralph Morgan. Howard Bay designed one of his extraordinarily apt settings for a play which, all reservations made, was still a splendid tribute to the power and dignity with which the meek conquer their conquerors. Winter Soldiers dealt with the same theme, but Dan James's play was sharper in outline, more concisely dramatic; in theatre terms, it lacked the richness of character that Steinbeck achieved, but had more sweep and more urgency. Directed by Lem Ward, it was produced by the Studio Theatre of the New School, and closed before it had been given a fair chance to compete with more meretricious offerings. First produced on the West Coast as Cry Havoc! Allan Kenward's melodramatic piece about nurses on Bataan came to Broadway in December as Proof Thru the Night. Beneath exterior sensationalism, it was the old formula of inferior human types reformed by a crisis, and the brittleness of these types, and the somewhat contrived effect of the critical events, robbed the play of any substantial meanings. Through its first half, Maxwell Anderson's The Eve of St. Mark had the warm sense of characterization which is one of Mr. Anderson's gifts; but again, as in previous plays, he succumbed to the temptation, at the moment of greatest tension, to transfer his people's conflicts to a more literary plane. This indecision between prose and poetry marred the work. What one remembered with gratitude was the simple and searching family portrait of the opening scenes, the fine playing of William Prince as Quizz and of Aline MacMahon as his mother, the superb settings by Howard Bay and the masterly direction of Lem War.

Clifford Odets made the English version of Konstantin Simonov's The Russian People, for which Boris Aronson designed the settings, and which the Theatre Guild presented under the direction of Harold Clurman. Although it could not reach the heights of its own theme, and this in part through inadequate stage production, its vitality and realism at least reminded native playmakers that the occasion calls for something beyond the use of the war as background for conventional plots and stock characters, beyond pseudo-mysticism or melodrama.

Theater workers have contributed more directly to war morale outside than inside the playhouse, through the American Theater Wing War Service, which has founded half a dozen Stage Door Canteens, organized a speaker's bureau, set up a personnel division for guiding theatre people into war work, and is in process of creating brief topical shows for factory workers, called Lunchtime Follies. Many an actor has found a new eloquence with which to sell war bonds.

The bulk of theater fare in 1942 was seasoned to pre-war taste, with an occasionally sharper spicing in response to the stepped-up emotions of today. Clever stage design was in evidence, resourceful directing, shrewd observation, musical and dancing talent of real originality, and acting which ranged from the competent to the brilliant.

Revues and Vaudeville.

Leonard Sillman essayed that difficult genre, the 'intimate revue,' with New Faces of 1943 — and failed. Catherine Littlefield gave her choreographic talents to Stars on Ice. Vaudeville, disguised or plain, was a staple of the season: built around Ed Wynn's clowning, it was called Laugh, Town, Laugh. As Show Time, it displayed the familiar antics of Jack Haley and George Jessel: as Priorities of 1942 and New Priorities of 1943, it assembled Bert Wheeler, Willie Howard, Lou Holtz. Phil Baker, Paul Draper and others in programs which seemed more like televised radio shows than vaudeville as we remember it. Count Me In was vaudeville in essence, a Catholic University entertainment taken over by such professionals as Luella Gear and Charles Butterworth, and delightfully set by Howard Bay. Richly produced as to settings, music, lighting and costumes, Michael Todd's Star and Garter was a burlesque show on a sophisticated plane, and was played for burlesque values by Bobby Clark and by the queen of strip-tease, Gypsy Rose Lee. Wine, Women and Song belonged to the same species; it employed the inimitable Jimmy Savo, and was billed as a 'revue-vaudeville-burlesque.' Johnny Green composed the music for Beat the Band, a George Abbott show.

Rodgers and Hart proved once more their supremacy in the field with By Jupiter. Its plot-outline was borrowed from The Warrior's Husband, and the beauty and good taste of its scenes and costumes are to be credited to Jo Mielziner and Irene Sharaff. Its leading player was Ray Bolger, who long since became the peer of all tap-dancers, and who now adds superb pantomimic and verbal clowning to his achievements. His performance as Sapiens was an education in comic resourcefulness, in the perfectly timed gesture, the exquisite mobility of face and figure. By Jupiter is the American show at its best.

Revivals.

The past year proved that reviving old plays has risks as great as producing new ones. The casualty list includes Hedda Gabler, in which the First Lady of the Greek Theatre, Madame Katina Paxinou, acted with a somewhat dated virtuosity; Cheryl Crawford's revival of Barrie's A Kiss for Cinderella, with Luise Rainer miscast in the Maude Adams role; an Erwin Piscator production of Lessing's Nathan the Wise which stressed its championship of racial and religious tolerance; and a double bill combining Saroyan's Hello Out There and Chesterton's Magic, with Eddie Dowling as producer and actor.

Operetta found comparative favor. For two months, the Boston Comic Opera Company played Gilbert and Sullivan. The Chocolate Soldier in June and July was succeeded by The Merry Widow, The New Moon, and Rosalinda (an English version by George Marion, Jr., of Strauss' Die Fledermaus.) Bobby Clark and Mary Boland as Bob Acres and Mrs. Malaprop played The Rivals for obviously comic effects. The musical version of Porgy and Bess, revived by Cheryl Crawford, equalled its original success in 1935, with Todd Duncan again as Porgy, and Sportin' Life in the more than capable hands of Avon Long. Elmer Rice's Councellor-at-Law seemed destined for a second long run, by virtue of its engrossing good craftsmanship and the mellowed skill of Paul Muni as George Simon. Katharine Cornell was responsible for two star-studded revivals. Both individual brilliance and perfection of ensemble caused Candida, produced for Army and Navy relief, to extend its engagement; its case included Miss Cornell, Dudley Digges, Burgess Meredith, Raymond Massey and Mildred Natwick. Later in the year, a group of equal eminence was directed by Guthrie McClintic in Chekhov's The Three Sisters, — Judith Anderson, Ruth Gordon, Gertrude Musgrove, Tom Powers, Edmund Gwenn, — no mere background for Miss Cornell, but a superb instrument responding to every nuance and overtone of a play which challenges the actor's best.

Briefer Mention.

Run-of-the-mill entertainment was the goal of George Abbott's Jason, by Samson Raphaelson, in which a playwright teaches a dramatic critic about Life; Patterson Greene's thin comedy about the Pennsylvania Dutch, Papa Is All; and John Van Druten's Solitaire. Blood-curdlers were Uncle Harry, with Eva La Gallienne and Joseph Schildkraut; Guest in the House by Hagar Wilde and Dale Eunson, in which a neurotic home-destroyer is horribly destroyed; The Willow and I, John Patrick's study of a conflict between two sisters which brings madness to one of them. What is known as 'feminine psychology' was displayed by John Van Druten and Lloyd Morris in The Damask Cheek, its chief character resourcefully created by Flora Robson. A well-known restaurant frequented by Yiddish theatre folk was the setting of H. S. Kraft's Café Crown, in which Morris Carnovsky and Sam Jaffe richly impersonated two of the Royal's most flavorsome figures. Philip Barry's semi-allegorical Without Love was no more than an occasion for Katharine Hepburn's mannerisms. The Great Big Doorstep, by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, could have been an engrossing folk play about shiftless Louisiana Cajuns, had the characters acted by Louis Calhern and Dorothy Gish been more substantially written. S. N. Behrman's version of an old play by Ludwig Fulda, The Pirate, was a scene-designer's and costumer's holiday for Lemuel Ayers and Miles White; for Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, an exercise in crisp commedia dell'arte far within the limits of their talents. Sweet Charity made merry with the Woman's Friendly Hand Club; it was contrived by Irving Brecker and Manuel Seff, and produced by George Abbott.

Two plays deserve better than merely to be placed on the record, Native Son and The Skin of Our Teeth. The former was first produced in 1941, and played a return engagement in the fall of 1942. Canada Lee, who created Bigger Thomas in Orson Welles' original production, seemed more magnificent than ever in his portrayal of the tortured, frustrated Negro whom Paul Green and Richard Wright have so deeply understood and so richly brought to life. The Skin of Our Teeth was a whimsical and occasionally moving fantasy on mankind's capacity for muddling through disaster. Elia Kazan shrewdly directed it, and Albert Johnson matched its non-sequiturs in his settings, while Fredric March, Florence Eldridge and Tallulah Bankhead provided the surrealist acting which the piece required. The Skin of Our Teeth celebrates with tonic effect those qualities in man which invite catastrophes and by good luck and good heart surmount them. Those more concerned with the here and now, and less with the cosmic, have been more inspired by Native Son, where man struggles against man in scenes sharply focussed on present-day realities. Both plays demand far more than Broadway's average skill in authorship, more perception and technique in production and acting, and more alert intelligence in audiences. Between the two extremes lies the whole present range of our theatre.