New Plays in Manhattan

Get Me In the Movies. Philip Dunning, who was supposed to have had an important part in the writing of the raucous and exciting Broadway, is billed also as the co-author of this thing. The discrepancy between his two brain children is not nice to contemplate. The second is about a pale and gawky elf who wins a scenario-writing prize, comes to Hollywood, is besieged by unscrupulous women who want him to get them in the movies and is finally permitted to claim the hand of his own true sweetheart. Those in whom a severe spanking might cause concussion of the brain will be thrown into pleasant convulsions by the crudities of this noisy, dirty farce. Helen Baxter was the only member of the cast who acted her part.

Dorian Gray. This is a peculiarly stupid dramatization of Oscar O'Flahertie Wills Wilde's novel, about a youthful rake whose orgies cause a portrait of his pretty face to become more and more hideous. WTallis Clark was good as the Devil.

Skidding slid into Manhattan via Pasadena, where it had been subjected to an amateur performance. On the opening night, its author who rejoices in the name of Aurania Rouverol, made a demure speech before the curtain, saying how surprised she was that Broadway producers should have interested themselves in her homely frivolities.

The gauche little play needed no such apologetic introduction. In it was unfolded the story of a favorite daughter of Idaho, who, after attending an Eastern college, returned to the potato dad hills of her native state, followed by her fiance. Local entanglements of politics and domesticity prevented her immediate marriage. She was compelled to wait while her two sisters ran away from their husbands, while her maiden aunt gave a despondent tirade upon the subject of celibacy and while her father was appointed, after much political turmoil, to the bench of the Supreme Court. In the meantime, she got herself elected to the state legislature, thereby annoying her prospective husband.

The complications of the cluttered plot were sometimes sufficient to halt the action of the play. Yet by virtue of its clear-eyed perception as well as its naivete, the play was convincing and funny. Moreover it was well acted, especially by Charles Eaton who played the mop-eared little brother to the heroine.