New Play in Manhattan

Gambling. George Michael Cohan is an actor who, in the character of a hoary and vindictive gambler, by making improper proposals to a mercenary trollop, can cause middle-aged ladies to murmur happily with approval, although one would expect them to clap tippets to their ears.

"Isn't he a fine actor!" .they exclaim, though their knowledge of such emergencies is limited by a predilection for the Atlantic Monthly and the notion that it is wicked to take two cocktails before dinner. In Gambling, Actor Cohan visits a crisp tart at her bedizened lodgings and in his offers to pay for the upkeep of herself and them, a suspicion of the most vicious improprieties causes her merely to chuckle.

Actually, as Al Draper, George Cohan is not interested in getting intimate with Mazie. He has been informed in the first act that his ward, the daughter of a defunct pal, has been mysteriously murdered. Her debauched fiance has been acquitted in a trial. Al Draper, anxious to bring the murderer to bay, fastens his suspicions upon two girls, one the previous mistress of the acquitted fiance, the other her friend whom he cajoles into sharing an apartment with him in the hope of finding her to be a criminal. The mistress of the fiance of his murdered ward, he installs elsewhere with a housekeeper so that while apparently furthering her idealistic efforts to "go straight," he can investigate her also for clues to a crime which he suspects her of having committed. Al Draper decoys both of them eventually to his roulette and poker establishment from which, by means of a raid, they are hustled to the office of the district attorney. Here, in a prolonged questioning Mazie abuses the interlocutor and the assembled company with acid witticisms. After her snarlings are concluded, the audience is pleased to discover that both girls, though fairly bad, are innocent of a murder whose author, most suitably, commits off-stage suicide.

Fortunately, all this was not billed, like most of Author Cohan's opera, as "An American Comedy." George Cohan was born in 1878 on July 4. He has emphasized this accident ever since by waving the U. S. flag whenever possible. This irritating propensity, together with his blatant assurance, are the most disagreeable qualities in a man who is otherwise a shrewd and skillful playwright, a mime whose side-of-the-mouth technique with songs or wisecracks has made him a success in an almost infinite number of "American comedies," from Little Johnny Jones to The Merry Malones.

Gambling is a production in his best Broadway manner, possessed of a sharp, exciting first act, a specious but persuasive denouement and a cast that includes also Mary Phillips as Mazie.