New Plays in Manhattan

The Vanities. Tanned, tamed after four months in federal penitentiary at Atlanta, Earl Carroll last October said good-bye to Warden John Wilson Snook./-returned to Manhattan, with nimble fingers went about the work of crocheting the seventh edition of his Vanities, lewd, nude, lusty revue. Last week it had its premiere; inaccurate cries of "Author!" brought Perjurer-Producer Carroll to the stage. Broadwayfarers howled obsequious approval, others beat their hands, a few figuratively beat their breasts. Carroll, producer, had produced; his show was a success.

No dilettante, Carroll knows a beautiful female body when he sees one, knows, too, how not to drape it, is well aware that W. C. Fields is a good box-office name, that Joe Frisco, Ray Dooley, Gordon Dooley, Dorothy Knapp, in one theatre, insure against empty seats. The Carroll formula is simple, the execution elaborate: sign stars, hire lovely female bodies to undulate across stage, buy a few "hot" sketches. Music is nonessential (there is but one worthy song, "Vaniteaser," in the show).

Elmer Gantry. Evangelists are not popular upon Broadway and in the theatre they are monsters of depravity, to be baited and scorned. Sinclair Lewis in his savage history made Elmer Gantry a lewd and naughty figure. But in the play he is so wicked as to be incredible, an exaggerated bugaboo of vast proportion, snooping in his sordid tents with concupiscent treachery.

The first act discovers Elmer Gantry, newly ordained and already eloquent in the jargon of eternal love and mortal lust, laying siege to little Lulu Bains, daughter of a deacon. Having seduced her, he is threatened with a wedding. But Elmer Gantry prays to God: "Show me some way out of this marriage, for Christ's sake, Amen." Sneering at his feeble victim, he escapes the nuptials by stamping out of the ministry to become a salesman of plows.

Next, he comes snorting into the tent of Sharon Falconer, a pretty, vicious and successful evangelist. The audience is permitted to hear his harangues for heaven and then to overhear the back stage scene wherein Gantry gains quick access to the couch of this ignorant and lusty lady. With her he goes to Atlantic City, to inaugurate a pier tabernacle, the biggest in the world. It is while he is making scurrilous advances to a choir singer that Elmer Gantry, casting away a cigaret causes this gaudy temple to burst into flames--a conflagration reproduced upon the stage with tissue paper and magic lanterns in a manner once realistic but now absurd.

The last act exhibits further highlights in the sky pilot's hypocritical career. He is the Rev. Dr. Elmer Gantry now, but no less eager to share a bed of shame. At the end, there is no lessening of his success nor any change of tactics. He is seen spewing, before an unseen congregation, a prayer that "we may make this a moral nation."

Patrick Kearney, who wrote the first two acts of the play, was consistent enough to be frankly and fearfully melodramatic. The cast is scattered through the theatre in reckless, impertinent profusion and the technique of The Miracle and murder mysteries is carried so far as to include a sidewalk revival meeting before the final act.

Before the premiere, there was some feeling that the play would be offensive to Manhattan God-fearers; disputes arose in matter of how much its bitterness should be quieted to avoid the censor. It was not toned down much. A Cross was visible in lecherous episodes and Sharon's trumpets had jazz-mutes in them. Ructions among the producers led to postponements and the retirement of William A. Brady from his sponsorship. On the first night, the press agent, having left his job, leaped upon the stage with Sharon's converts, voicing a mock repentance. The crude vigor of the performance and the oily excesses of the actors made Elmer Gantry an exciting, though phoney, melodrama.

Guns. At Wallack's Theatre in Manhattan, called by a punster "the flophouse" because of the many failures it has housed, opened last week a piece called Guns. The first act was laid in a speakeasy in Manhattan, the second in a speakeasy in Chicago, the third at the Mexican border. Charlie O'Connor, Chicago racketeer, induced chaste Cora Chase to go with him to the Mexican-U.S. line, there to smuggle contraband Chinese into the states. Into the picture another racketeer, "The Colorado Special," thrust himself, looked gaga at Cora, she at him. He joined O'Connor in the alien-running scheme. What he turned out to be after all only faintly interested slim audiences, their tympanic membranes offended by too-frequent gunfire. One James Hagan wrote the play, showed only that he knows crook-talk.

/- It appeared that Producer Carroll would soon have the opportunity of meeting Warden Snook once more. Owing to alleged "privileges" tendered to distinguished sojourners at Atlanta penitentiary, an investigation was being started last week, by a congressional committee. It was known that delectable Dorothy Knapp had vis ited Producer Carroll during his duress and that she had lunched at the home of Warden Snook. Both Producer Carroll and Performer Knapp would probably be called as witnesses in the forthcoming investigation.