Minus the J.

For years reserved, Harvard-bred New York Times Critic J. Brooks Atkinson wrote reviews as sober and dignified as a Times editorial. Atkinson left the pun-making and funmaking to such colleagues of those days as Heywood Broun, Alexander Woollcott, Percy Hammond, George Jean Nathan.

Of recent years, having wrenched the J. from his name, Atkinson--though thoughtful as ever about good plays--has become a Katzenjammer Kid about bad ones. This season he has pulled leg after leg of flop after flop. Of Case History he wrote: "The stepmother goes off her chump." Of Come Across: "You see him in bed, which is no treat." Of The Devil Takes a Bride: "This is a sordid tale, my mates." Of the author of The Good: "An old Hudson (N. Y.) boy, Mr. Erskin . . . should hesitate about visiting back home." Of Thanks for Tomorrow: "Thanks for tomorrow, thanks for last week, thanks for next Friday--in fact, thanks for everything except last night."

Last week, with the reverberations of Orson Welles's radio riot still ringing in everyone's ears, Atkinson reviewed the Orson Welles-directed, Danton's Death (see col. 2). His review concluded: "(Ladies and gentlemen, you have just been reading a review of a performance of 'Danton's Death' at the Mercury Theatre last evening. It is a play of imagination based on history. There is no occasion for alarm.)"

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