The movies take over the stage

CEORCE JEAN NATHAN

A prediction of what will happen to the legitimate theatre when the Hollywood directors come to Broadway

The news that the motion picture companies, operating in combination, have bought out the New7 York theatrical producers and taken over their theatres in tolo for the coming season naturally came as something of a surprise to those of us who rely for our information, during the summer months, on the pony express to the Westchester Embassy and Atlantic Beach clubs. There had been rumors, of course, but we smilingly and loftily had waved them aside, like so many week-end invitations to Quogue, L. I. The idea was unthinkable, unbelievable. Yet the fact now confronts us.

On September 1, according to the announcements, the movie industry will be in complete control of the legitimate stage and its drama, with Mr. Irving Thalberg and Mr. Louis B. Mayer of the MetroGoldwyn company, Mr. Samuel Goldwyn and Mr. Joseph Schenck of the United Artists and Twentieth Century companies, the Messrs. Cohen, Cohn, Cone, Coyne, Garfunkel, Katz, Satz, Zukor and Lustvogel of the Paramount company, and the Messrs. Selznick, Sheehan, Kraftsuppe, Laemmle, Ganzbrust, Franklin, Lasky and the eighteen Warner Brothers of the various other companies as a board of governing directors and general overlords.

With this impressive array of names, tin; situation looks encouraging. It may be true that Mr. Golodwyn, in bis own film field, took Zola's Nana and converted her into an Edward Childs Carpenter ingenue; it may be true that Mr. Thalberg took O'Neill's Nina Leeds and converted her into a virginal Florence Nightingale; it may be true that Mr. Katz, or whatever his brother-in-law's or uncle's or cousin's name is, took Peg o' My Heart and introduced scenes showing Peg dancing in her birthday clothes at a National Republican Committee stag smoker; but, after all, let us not forget that Mr. Gilbert Miller called Bourdet's Le Sexe Faible The Sex Fable when he produced it in New York, that Mr. Guthrie McClintic took Obey s simple little Lucrece and made it indistinguishable from a Cecil De Mille production, minus only an opal bathtub, and that the Theatre Guild, besides actually playing George O'Neil's American Dream backwards, has rejected as utterly unimportant and insignificant plays by O'Casey, Pirandello—and for many years—Eugene O'Neill, in favor of the masterpieces of Dawn Powell, the Siftons, A. A. Milne and David Liebovitz.

As I say, the situation, despite the pitiful grunts and grousings of Mr. Brock Pemberton, who produces about one play in every three years, and of Mr. Percy Hammond, who has to come in all the way from Easthampton, Long Island, to review it—the situation, as I say, looks encouraging. Particularly when we peruse the preliminary plans of the movie executives.

According to the Hollywood announcements, the season will officially be opened with an all-star $350,000 revival of Verneuil's two-character play, jealousy. There will be eighty-five people in the cast, including Clara Bow, Jean Harlow, Carole Lombard, Toby Wing, Mae West, Joan Blondell, Anna Sten, Claudette Colbert, Conchita Montenegro, Dolores del Rio, Ginger Rogers, Myrna Loy, and a swimming pool. It has not yet been decided whether men will be included in the cast or not.

Following close upon the heels of this colossal production will come Katharine Cornell's presentation of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, with Miss Cornell appearing in the nude. Basil Rathbone who, under the present theatrical dispensation, has been playing Romeo to Miss Cornel I s Juliet on the road, is to be replaced, by way of giving a little life and vitality to the stale classic, with James Cagney. The third presentation, due on September 2b, is to In' a new American drama, by Mr. Louis B. Mayer's brother-in-law, called Sex!!! It is possible, says the announcement, that the title may he changed to Sex!!, but several conferences w ill have to be held before a definite decision is arrived at.

In October, we are promised four great productions. Norma Shearer, under the artistic personal direction of Mr. Thalberg, is billed to do Ibsen's The Master Builder, rewritten by Ben Hecbt and Charles MacArthur, with Busby Berkeley in charge of the choreography. Madison Square Garden has been leased for the presentation and Samuel Rothafel, the beloved "Roxy," will have charge of the stage lighting and lobby decorations. Next will come a "musical romance" with a great cast of 700, to lie produced in the Little Theatre. The role of the little orphan princess will be filled by May Robson, while that of the amorous Grand Duke Adolpho will be played simultaneously by the Four Mills Brothers. If the Four Mills Brothers are occupied at the time making shorts, it is announced that their place will be taken by the Three Radio Rogues. Johnny Weissmuller is to have the role of the old crippled inn-keeper. Oscar Straus will compose the score, which is to be rewritten by Gordon and Ravel. During the second act, the whole audience will be moved up to the balcony that it may, from that point of vantage, enjoy a bird's-eye view of the chorus manoeuvres and so not miss the Hollywood effects contrived by cameras swung aloft on derricks.

On or about October 18, Mr. Samuel Goldwyn will personally in the flesh supervise a big revival of Hall Caine's The Christian, with a cast made up of all the Jewish actors who have been banned from Germany. Lest a propaganda purpose be suspected, the play will be given in French. A new airplane device, the patent on which Mr. Goldwyn controls in conjunction with Mr. Howard Hawks, will he introduced to the public for the first time directly after the scene between John Storm and Glory (Juayle in the third act.

For the last week in October, a new American classic written in collaboration by the twenty-seven scenarists at the RKO studios is promised. Its tentative title is Adultery, though this, for censorship reasons, may be altered either to Lechery or Rape.

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November, however, will really see things get under way. What goes before, the movie people say, will be merely hors d'oeuvres. The first week of this month will bring with it a sensation of sensations, to wit, a super-realistic revival of Siberia, with Greta Garbo. It was at first also planned to use real snow and ice but this was abandoned as being sheer superfluity.

As the treat following, we are to be given a fine novelty called An Evening With the Stars. Booked for the Guild Theatre, the entertainment is to consist of personal appearances by ten rare film artists, to wit, Richard Dix, Buddy Rogers, John Gilbert, Clive Brook, Boris Karloff, Joan Crawford, Helen Twelvetrees, ZaSu Pitts, Mitzi Green, and Lupe Velez. Mr. Dix will appear in an open-front white sport shirt, will frown intellectually in scholarly silence for ten minutes, and will conclude his performance by saying, "I want to thank all my loyal fans for the wonderful reception they have given me this evening. I feel mighty proud, I can tell you!" Mr. Rogers will play the saxophone for five minutes and beat on trap drums for five more, all to a lovable boyish smile, where-after he will step to the footlights (in this instance supplanted by a row of powerful navy searchlights) and say, "I want to thank all my loyal fans for the wonderful reception they have given me this evening. I feel mighty proud, I can tell you!" Mr. Gilbert will come on, nose and all, and vouchsafe the ladies in the audience twenty minutes of hintful and passionate, if somewhat regrettably fossilized, love looks, after which he will say, "I want to thank all my loyal fans for the wonderful reception they have given me this evening. I feel mighty proud, I can tell you!" Mr. Clive Brook will smoke a pipe and emulate Mr. Dix by frowning intellectually in scholarly silence for fourteen minutes, after which, being British, he will vary his colleagues' averments by saying, "I wish to thank all of my loyal fans for the jolly reception they have accorded me this evening. I feel jolly well set up about it, I say, I say!" Mr. Karloff will make himself up like a two-months-old corpse and will lie in state on the stage for eighteen minutes, the audience being privileged to pass in front of the bier and to touch and feel him. Being an artist who takes his art seriously and so not wishing to step out of the picture, Mr. Karloff will say nothing but will have an attendant, dressed as a grave-digger, pass out handbills informing the audience that he wants to thank all his loyal fans for the wonderful reception they have given him that evening and that he feels mighty proud, lie can tell them.

Miss Crawford's part in the program will consist of a beauty lecture. She will show the ladies in the audience how, by the application of two quarts of tomato juice cocktails, a can of Sherwin-Williams carmine paint, and a large brush dipped into a pail containing half a dozen old red flannel union suits, milady's mouth may be made to look like a lovely and tempting exploded watermelon. After the lecture Miss Crawford will prettily and demurely thank her loyal fans for the wonderful reception they have given her. Miss Twelvetrees, who believes in the use of hut one quart of tomato juice cocktails on her lips and who hence is ethereal, will pout sweetly at the gentlemen in the audience for ten minutes, thus inculcating in them an overpowering Heimweh for the Poillon Sisters, and Miss Pitts will open her eyes like a new baseball park and go in for wistfulness in a big way, after which both ladies will coyly finger their skirts and thank their loyal fans for the wonderful reception. Little Milzi Green, who now weighs almost as much as Jim Tully, will come on in rompers and be very kiddy cutie, delighting the audience, as extra good measure, with a boop-a-doop song. Then she will lisp, "I wanna thank all my thweet fanth for thith wunnerful retheption." Finally, Miss Velez will appear and will give, in quick succession, nine imitations of an orthodox young Mexican woman imitating Hollywood's picture of an uncontrollable and devastating flood of yohimbin. Miss Velez, breathless and exhausted by the strain of her efforts, and eager to put on her old-fashioned nightgown and have a nice hot glass of Ovaltine before going quietly to bed, will pause long enough to say in over-broken English, "Me wants to tank my frens for zis warnerful reception what zey have given me zis evening."

It promises to be a big night, whatever Mr. Brooks Atkinson may say. Speaking for myself, I have ordered two new suits of evening clothes.

Another big November item will be a revised version of Bernard Shaw's Back to Methuselah, with not merely the first but all of the scenes in the Garden of Eden. Adam will be Buster Crabbe, with forty Eves.

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The following production, it is hoped, will be one of the real box-office sensations of the season. It will be a revival of Little JL omen, which, you will recall, when done on the screen was a gold-mine because of Katharine Hepburn's presence in it. In order to ensure an even greater box-office success on the stage, the movie executives will cast the play not only with Miss Hepburn but with her family, including father, mother, brother, sister, two uncles and aunts, and former husband, Sid Grauman.

The outstanding production planned for December will be the Wampas Babies in a dramatic epic of gangster life entitled, Shoot Her In The Pants, the Coat and Brassiere Are Mine.

Further plans for 1935 include a new play by John Monk Saunders for Sidney Blackmer, who will be supported by George M. Cohan, Walter Hampden and Walter Huston.