Notes

General Leonard Wood's son, Leonard Wood, Jr., has entered the theatrical business, and will shortly open a stock company in White Plains, N. Y.

Blossom Time, which opened in Philadelphia on October 8, has had the longest run of any show ever produced in that city.

Channing Pollock has already received $300,000 royalties from the various companies playing his popular hit, The Fool, which was advertised as " the Lenten play." By the time all the road companies have completed their barnstorming he expects to have made $1,000,000.

In London, the first night of Eugene O'Neill's Anna Christie, with Pauline Lord in the title role, received a tremendous ovation. After the first act the curtain was rung up a dozen times during the applause.

De Wolf Hopper dropped into the Cort theatre recently while a rehearsal of the all-children caste for a production of Merton of the Movies to raise funds for the Professional Children's School was in progress. " What are you doin' ? " asked Hopper of Marc Connolly, who adapted the novel for the stage, " Rehearsing your New York caste for 1930?

" Sure," replied Connolly. " Our present company will be too old by that time."

Among the more important revivals of the London season are Pinero's The Gay Lord Quex and Sudermann's Magda. The latter was played by Sarah Bernhardt in 1895, and Duse, then in London, put it on a few days later. Within a year Mrs. Pat Campbell also gave it, and the records of these three performances were preserved for posterity by Bernard Shaw in his Dramatic Opinions and Essays.

St. John Ervine, author of John Ferguson and Jane Clegg, produced in this country by the Theatre Guild, recently wrote an article in a London paper discussing bad manners in the theatre. He suggested that a sort of pound be established in the pit for the herding together of late comers. Thus they could see the play without disturbing the rest of the audience.

On the theory that Shakespeare is " so great that you can do anything with him you like," a repertory company in Birmingham, England, will produce Cymbeline in a modern setting. The characters will wear dinner jackets and the latest gowns.

The Best Plays

These are the plays, which, in the light of metropolitan criticism, seem most important: PEER GYNT--Ibsen's tragi-comic epic of the seeker of self-realization, effectively staged by Kommisashevsky, master of the Russian School of Expressionism, and competently acted by Joseph Schildkraut. Some of the settings by Lee Simonson mark the high points in his enviable record of artistic achievement. ROMEO AND JULIET--Next to Hamlet the longest run a Shakespearean play has enjoyed in America in the current century. Superbly acted by Jane Cowl and Rollo Peters. MERTON OF THE MOVIES -- The pathos of hokum. Glenn Hunter in Harry Leon Wilson's adroit satire on the eighth art, adapted for the stage by Marc Connolly and George S. Kaufman. The movie industry amusingly " shown up " from supers to Will Hays. RAIN--A brilliant tract against militant Christianity in the South Seas. Jeanne Eagels as the attractive, hard-boiled demimondaine. U. S. Marines, real rain, and the hot, moist breath of the tropics. SEVENTH HEAVEN--A blacksnake whip and an off-stage rendering of La Marseillaise are the emotional assistants to Helen Menken in a thrilling melodrama of Paris. KIKI--Lenore Ulric still turning 'em away at the Belasco Theatre. The story of a little Paris grisette who wasn't half so bad as she painted herself. THE ADDING MACHINE -- Expressionistic projection of an humble Babbitt called Mr. Zero. A satirical arraignment of bourgeois justice by Elmer Rice, who has performed the miracle of achieving the Theatre Guild by way of Broadway. You AND I--The Harvard Prize Play, by Philip J. Q. Barry, with the best balanced cast in town. Clever dialogue and shrewd observations of manners, morals, and institutions in the younger generation. THE LAST WARNING -- The season's best shilling shocker at about twelve shillings a seat. But worth it. Mechanical tricks and theatrical ingenuity employed with spine-chilling effect. THE LAUGHING LADY -- Ethel Barrymore is back in the drawing-room. As the somewhat declasse Lady Marjorie she is epigrammatically but insistently prudish about her love affair with the brilliant married lawyer who flayed her in the divorce court. P o L LY PREFERRED -- Genevieve Tobin appears in a comedy with a perfect first act. A go-getter, finding a pretty girl stranded in the Automat, makes a movie star and finally a wife out of her. A burlesque director furnishes most of the laughs.