New Plays in Manhattan

Grand Hotel. About once a season comes a play so superlative as this. People have been going to see Grand Hotel for some time in Max Reinhardt's Berlin theatre, elsewhere in Europe. It was written by Vicki Baum, staged, directed and produced (with Harry Moses) in Manhattan by Herman Shumlin. It is difficult to imagine a better translation than that which William A. Drake has made. Originally titled Menschen Inn Hotel (People in a Hotel), the play manages to grasp a large chunk of existence, thrust it into a Berlin hostelry, expose it completely. It would be easy to demonstrate how Lust, Greed, Despair, Fear, Bravery are pursued throughout 36 hours in the life of a hotel and become Love, Disgrace, Hope, Birth, Death. But that would be doing precisely what Playwright Baum has, with consummate taste and brilliant use of understatement, avoided. Instead, she tells a series of delicately interwoven stories:

A danseuse, having lost confidence in herself, finds a man in her room who has come to steal her jewelry. He is a disgraced nobleman. They fall in love, her self-confidence returns, he returns her belongings, sets out to get money enough to accompany her to Vienna. But they never get to Vienna, for he is shot while attempting to pilfer money from the room of an industrialist.

The industrialist has compromised himself for the first time in his life with a young stenographer. The stenographer goes away with a clerk who, knowing himself about to die, is cheerfully spending his life's savings. As the curtain falls a prophetic doctor is still seated grimly in the lobby, the desk clerk is notified that his wife has finally had her baby, and a traveler comes in to occupy the room in which the killing took place.

The entire performance comes off with a precision and smartness that result from a most fortunate collaboration of casting, direction, staging, acting. A revolving stage facilitates the presentation of the 18 scenes. The smoothness with which each episode blends into the whole drama may be attributed to Director Shumlin. As the fleshy manufacturer, bluffing his way through a merger, Siegfried Rumann is convincingly brutal. He looks and performs not unlike Emil Jannings. He was an officer in the German army during the War, was wounded, acted in The Channel Road, has sung in Manhattan beer halls for a living. The stenographer is played by Hortense Alden (Lysistrata), an ingratiating person with an attractive, chirrupy voice. Eugenie Leontovich, a beautiful lady who came to the U. S. from Russia to dance, turns in an extraordinary piece of acting as the danseuse, making instantly credible a swift series of emotions and setting a new high for plausible stage love scenes. All of these people should be made by this show.

By his appearance in Grand Hotel, Henry Hull (Lulu Belle, Michael & Mary, The Ivory Door) has also given his theatrical reputation a boost. He is the dissolute Baron Von Gaigern whose increasing desperation at his failure to get funds, so that he may be aboard the dancer's train, is terminated by a revolver shot. Actor Hull says he likes the role better than any he has ever played since he started acting in 1911. He was born in Louisville, Ky., is 37 years old, went to Columbia University. He likes to farm, has a wife and two children, has written two plays (Congratulations, Manhattan). He says if he ever quits acting he will take up colonizing.

Hello Paris. The headliner in this latest outcropping of bad taste produced by the Brothers Shubert is that exponent of scatology, Charles Partlow ("Chic") Sale. Mr. Sale is the man who brought the subject of rural sanitation to the immediate attention of the U. S. public last year when he published a slim volume called The Specialist which has sold some 650,000 copies. As a side issue he has also endorsed a cathartic (Ex-lax). But the first and principal vocation of Mr. Sale remains the theatre. He has been on the stage for the past 18 years.

In Hello Paris Mr. Sale indicates a pronounced delicacy toward the subject which has made him most of his money. Only once, when he wanders out on the stage with a pine board, does he capitalize the utility which has made him famous. For the rest of the performance he comports himself like a good rube character actor. He takes the part of the grandfather of a family which has grown rich in Oklahoma oil and which has decided to go to Paris to see the sights. The attraction is adapted from Homer Croy's novel They Had to See Paris. The few moments of talent in the entire production, aside from those supplied by Mr. Sale, occur when Lois Deppe and his Negro jubilee singers appear. Hello Paris cannot be favorably compared to another musicomedy based on the same idea called Fifty Million Frenchmen.

The Tyrant. An unfailing source of excitement are the works of Rafael Sabatini, famed sword-&-cloakster. The Tyrant is not a dramatization of. any of the author's 25 novels, but amounts to an extract of all of them. The story is based on the conquests of Cesare Borgia in middle Italy.

The Sabatini Cesare Borgia, as the author has previously been at pains to point out (The Life of Cesare Borgia), is a much maligned warrior and statesman whose evil reputation is attributable to the lying tongues of his envious contemporaries. To save the state of Solignola, Panthasilea Degli Speranzoni (Lily Cahill) attempts to ensnare Borgia (Louis Calhern), but instead falls in love with him and ruins her plot. When Solignola falls, she comes home to witness her family's disgrace, her lover's triumph, snatches from him a poisoned cup and drinks it. Aware of her own clan's infamy and Borgia's greatness, she dies in his arms.

The settings of The Tyrant are heavy, mournful, consistent with the drama. Miss Cahill and Mr. Calhern will probably be even more excellent in their roles when they have learned their lines.

Made In France. It would be pleasant to record that Lya De Putti, the small luscious lady with the heart-shaped mouth who played opposite Emil Jannings in Variety, is as complete a success on the comedy stage as she was in the silent cinema. But this would be untrue. The scene of Made In France is laid in a chateau which a group of Americans have rented and in which the husband and suitors of the two ladies in the party were billeted during the War. One gathers that the gentlemen were active back-area cutups for when Miss De Putti makes her appearance she accuses each of them of the paternity of her twins. And Miss De Putti must have done some circulating herself for from each of the guilty gentlemen she receives 20,000 francs. But it turns out that she really was not a bad girl at all. Her offspring prove to be two War orphans and everybody decides to let her keep the money for their upbringing.

Made In France may be considered as over-roguish, but no worse than the average biological farce. Miss De Putti's mumming, more enthusiastic than impressive, runs to posturing, comic mispronunciations, acrobatics.

Light Wines & Beer. This play was produced seven years ago under the name of The Good Old Days. Charles Winninger and George Bickel acted in it then. The present edition is acted by Al Shean (once of Gallagher & Shean) and Sam Bernard II, nephew of the late famed Sam Bernard. The story is about two honest saloonkeepers, one of whom feels justified in maintaining his resort after the passage of the 18th Amendment. The plot is further flavored by a love affair between the children of the two publicans and by the entrance of hijackers. It ends happily. For folk who enjoy anti-Prohibition propaganda on the stage, apothegms such as "The dry law is all wet" will prove appealing. A very nice, light lager was on draught in the lobby on the opening night.

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