Belasco Cup

For five years the Little Theatre Tournament, held in Manhattan for the David Belasco Cup, has symbolized the removal of amateur theatricals from small-town drawing-rooms and carriage sheds to more or less formal theatres. The contestants produce one-act plays only, either new or published.

For three years the players of the Little Theatre of Dallas, Tex., have marched home with the shining trophy. This year they did not compete. But the trophy had even further to go than to Texas when the fifth tournament was finished last week. The judges had little hesitancy in awarding it to a group from Welwyn Garden City,* England, for their repetition of Mr. Sampson, a comedy of Cornish village life with which the same players lately won the amateur play championship of their own country.

College girls, high-school children, blind people, young Hebrew men and Negroes were among the 17 groups of contestants. They came from Boston; Harlem; Memphis, Tenn.; Derita, N. C.; Tulsa, Okla.; and many another far-flung spot.

Interest attached to the Derita play, The Last of the Lowries, when, last week, its author, Paul Green, received a 1927 Pulitzer Prize for his longer work, In Abraham's Bosom. But it was to Mr. Sampson by Charles Lee and The Delta Wife by Walter McClellan, to The Immortal Beloved by Martia Leonard, and The Fool's Errand by Eulalie Spence, that prizes of $200 were given for intrinsic dramatic merit.