Double-Jeopardy

Last August, Works Progress Administration put Mrs. Hallie Flanagan of the Vassar Experimental Theatre in charge of its new Federal Theatre Project, whose aim was to employ idle stage folk "in the profession for which they have been trained." Since then FTP has made 9,000 jobs, put on circuses, marionette shows, vaudeville programs, revivals of the classics at high schools, playgrounds, Y. M. C. A.'s from Springfield, Mass, to San Diego, Calif. In show business only seven months, the U. S. Government last week reached the goal of all theatrical enterprises: Broadway.

Of all 13 FTP regions, New York City has most actors, most trouble. Originally in charge of the region was Elmer Rice, who wrote Street Scene in 1928. Failing to repeat that phenomenal success, Mr. Rice has become "progressively disenchanted" with the theatre. It was his idea that out of the piteous plight of his down-at-heel mummers might arise the beginnings of a State Theatre. The chef d'oeuvre of Director Rice's regime was a dramatized newsreel called Ethiopia. When WPA headquarters in Washington learned about Ethiopia the production was hastily canceled as a "dramatization which may affect our international relations." Mr. Rice's disenchantment was complete. Crying that "freedom of expression" had been "stifled," he turned in his resignation.

His place was taken by his assistant, a 33-year-old Harvardman named Philip Barber with much practical backstage experience with the Group Theatre and the Theatre Guild. Director Barber soothed things over for a while by substituting for the Ethiopian production a dramatization called Triple-A Plowed Under, which reviews the Administration's farm program without giving the New Deal any the worst of it. Last week, when a drama called Jefferson Davis became the first Federal production to reach a Times Square theatre, Director Barber began catching it from all sides.

Jefferson Davis was written by John McGee, FTP regional director for the Southeast. In three acts and twelve scenes, this sombre pageant of the life of the Confederacy's first & only President unfolds with little liveliness but much discretion. Opening on the 75th anniversary of Davis' inaugural at Montgomery, the play's cast numbered 36 minor performers, including a grandniece of Davis named Winifred Davis Crawford, and Actor Guy Standing Jr. The son and namesake of the cinema's Sir Guy Standing had been put on FTP's payroll at the regular $23.86 a week, was entrusted with the title role. Plan was for Jefferson Davis to run three days in Manhattan, then strike out for a tour of 44 towns in the South where the United Daughters of the Confederacy were supposed to be preparing a warm welcome.

Following the premiere of Jefferson Davis, nobody publicly rose to question the anomaly of employing Federal funds to present a waxworks glorification of an arch-enemy of the Union, but the venture was damned on practically all other counts.* "Jefferson Davis," observed the New York Sun, "from the standpoint of playwriting, direction and acting would do little credit to the sophomore class of any second-rank high school. . . . Actors and others connected with the art of the drama most certainly are entitled to their share of the assistance the Government is extending to the jobless, but taxation plus boredom for the theatre-going citizens savors of double-jeopardy."

"Since Jefferson Davis is dedicated to provincial playgoers," sagely remarked the New York World-Telegram, "it is not to be considered by fastidious Broadway standards."

Flushed by newshawks at the premiere, Mrs. James Henry Parker, potent United Confederate Daughter, declared: "I thought it was my duty to come as President of the New York Chapter, but I think it was a mistake to produce Jefferson Davis in the North."

Director Barber's troubles grew more realistic when the stage hands' union declared that its members would not take to the road with Jefferson Davis unless paid the regular union scale of $100 a week instead of FTP's standard $23.86. The play, they declared, was a "commercial proposition," would compete with private theatrical enterprises, tend to lower regular theatrical admission prices with its $1.10 top.

Meanwhile a deplorable clerical accident caused Director Barber and his staff their most acute embarrassment of the week. FTP Vaudeville Production 4-A was booked to appear at Manhattan's Stuyvesant High School, while Production 3-A was to be sent to amuse U. S. soldiers stationed on Governor's Island. Through some stupid blunder, the soldiers, to their great disgust, were offered 4-A, a skit called School Days in which frisky scholars tossed apples at their teacher and blurted low-calibre puns. To Stuyvesant High School, on the other hand, went 3-A, a divertissement called Parisian Nights. Intended for military consumption, this program included a scene between a bare-legged young woman, a master of ceremonies and an importunate young man. Sample dialog:

M. of C.--Meet Lulu, 15 and never been kissed.

He--It's a cinch she don't hang out in Battery Park. Give me a kiss.

She--Give me a dollar first.

He--Aw, you're over 15.

*Grieved were Massachusetts FTP officials last week when the selectmen of Plymouth banned a FTP performance of Maxwell Anderson's Valley Forge because the play's language was "obscene" and because the play's actors were "hams." FTP deleted offending passages, pushed the show on through its State tour.

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