I've attached a newspaper ad for the revue's fine-tuning in New Haven.
As we're all old radio fans here, I don't need to tell you who Dorothy McNulty was. Warner Bros. allowed her to change her name in November 1937, a few weeks after getting married to Dr. Lawrence Scroggs Singleton, though she was actually using "Penny Singleton" by May 1937 and had children's stories published under that name.
NATHAN APPROVES OF “GREAT TEMPTATIONS” NEW SHUBERT EFFORT
Winter Garden Revue May Lack Humor, but Has It Many Points to Recommend It, Critic Declares.
BY GEORGE JEAN NATHAN.
NEW YORK, May 29—SO FAR as the Messrs. Shubert are concerned, the honors of the last ten days go to Brother J.J. rather than to Brother Lee. It is the former who is responsible for the valuable and new Winter Garden show, “The Great Temptations;” it is the latter who is responsible for the entertaining but hardly valuable article in the current member of Vanity Faire entitled—rather generously, one may say—“All’s Right With the Theatrical World.” Let us consider each of the brothers’ efforts in order.
At the Winter Garden, Mr. J. J. Shubert has mounted a spectacular dancing show that, if it lucks humor, yet has many points to recommend it. In the first place, It moves swiftly and easily; in the second place, it is attractively costumed; in the third place, it discloses an exceptionally well-trained dancing ensemble; in the fourth place, it has called upon certain Parisian revues for some of their more beguiling features, where the more usual custom is to call upon them for their poorer elements; and, in the fifth place, it has got the best tune, “Valencia,” that the European music show stage has boasted in the last 12-month.
So far as comedy goes, the one outstanding number is a dialogue of a “Gentleman Prefer Blondes” order between a Miss Dorothy McNulty, who handles her end superbly, and a competent feeder named Jack Benny. This is funny stuff; Ernest Boyd and I almost swallowed our Cremo Coronas laughing at it. There arc also a few good laughs in a burlesque of “The Shanghai Gesture,” but beyond these, the humor of the show is feeble. One sketch, in which two hangovers find themselves the next morning in a strange bed, has possibilities, but they are not realized.
AS if duly appreciating that the comedy was not all it should be, Mr. J. J. Shubert spread himself in other directions and, as I have noted, with happy results. In the so-called Sixteen Foster Girls he has dredged up a very dexterous file of hoofers; in his stage colorings, he has worked, through his lieutenants, with a very fair eye to loveliness; and in his spectacular employment of the venerable flight of stairs he has achieved some eye-fetching effects.
Just as the girl named Bobbie Perkins took away the “Garrett Gaieties” this year from the better-known and more heavily emphasized members of the company, so do we find, in the Winter Garden show, the McNulty girl, though she has only a few minutes in which to turn the truck, taking away the honors from the stars.
Billy B. Van, true enough is as amusing as his material allows him to be, but his material—all of it taken together—isn’t as good as the few minutes’ word given La McNulty. As for the headliners aside from the M. Van, they prove little. Hazel Dawn wears her costumes well, and that is about all. And Miller and Lyles and Jay C. Flippen, the latter at times a diverting blackface zany, are not up to their marks on this occasion.
NOW that Mr. J. J. Shubert has been decorated with an appropriate number of bay leaves, let us proceed to Mr. Lee. The latter’s article, referred to above, is one of a series in which Redacteur Crowninshield is considering the influence of the movies on the theater and drama. For his slice of the argument pro and con, Mr. Lee Shubert has taken as a chopping block a confection of mine humble own which appreared in the American Mercury a few months ago and in which I delivered myself of some apparently objectionable views, on the subject.
With these views Mr. Shubert is, it seems, not precisely in entire accord in point of fact, he appears to agree with them to the extent and in the degree that Wayne B. Wheeler agrees with Mr. Schlitz. It is not,
however, the circumstance of Mr. Shubert’s disagreement that occupies my present attention, but rather the arguments that he offers in extenuation.
I have neither time nor space to go into Mr. Shubert’s ripostes at length, so by way of illustration shall confine myself to a choice sample. Thus, for example, speaking of the invasion of movie money
into the theater, he makes the following rejoinder: “As for the fear of some dramatists and critics and members of the public that the backing of plays by movie money will mean a lowering of the standard of: the plays produced . . . my firm belief is that the motion picture people want, for screen material, plays which have been successful in the theater. They are not interested in failures.”
In other words, though Mr. Shubert means opposite; what the motion picture : people want for screen material is the successful commercial trash of the theater, not the plays that, because of their fineness, may well turn out commercial failures. What the motion picture people want, thus according to Mr. Shubert’s definition, are the “Alomas of the South Seas” and the “Silences” and the “Easts is Wests,” not “The Man With a Load of Mischief,” “The Fountain” and “Goat Song.”
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