George Jean Nathan:

Some Things to Be Explained.

patience, unreasonable demands, tantrums and often downright nastiness of many of the applicants for tickets, it would be all I could do to restrain myself from mayliem and homicide, accompanied by names not just

Covering Up

NEW YORK-The effete terson," who substituted such dirty but of a magnificent and Easterner makes a crack that bouncing about the stage as nigh unbelieveable foulness. the Wild West hero doesn't like. would have done credit to an "We don't talk like that out inebriated tennis ball and such here, mister!" snaps the latter hopping and skipping as sugAlan Dent, critic for, the London I follow right on the heels of as he pokes the Easterner in gested she had dined on MexiNews-Chronicle, on the way out the jaw. And the can jumping beans, was mistakof plays that timidly back away

GEORGE JEAN

NATHAN

curtain came down on the first act of "Hit the Trail" and at the

same time on the

exit of the backers' $220,000 investment.

en for a virtuoso of the acting art almost without a peer since the days of Bob Fitzsimmons and Betty Hutton.

A

from their themes and cheat them in the interests of what their authors fear is theaterAnother exit cue is the lettersin point was "Tea and Sympagoers' squeamishness. A case to-the-editor in which newspaper thy" in which the young hero, readers are always grumbling though all too obviously about the manners of box-office homosexual, was cautiously purattendants. To hear them tell it, veyed as only wrongly suspected it's all anyone can do to try to (of being one. Nobody, however, buy a ticket without being called was fooled about the exact a dirty name at best and, more nature of the character except likely, not being hit over the the less analytical among the head.

audience including most of the reviewers. As Dent remarks:

It remains for Maxwell Anderson to take gleeful advantage of the fact that the majority of the reviewing jukes at his "The Bad Seed" reported that the lit tle murderess in the play was nine years old (the age of Patty McCormack, who acts the role, as recorded in a biographical program note) when the play goes to considerable pains to emphasize that the character is only 8 and that her ninth birthday is still some time off. Last year I was asked by the I have stood near box-office of "Tea and Sympathy" to Equity Library Theater to sugwindows many a time and eaves evade the direct issue as it gest a good modern American dropped the verbal and general would have been for the authors play that it might do. I did so department of the complaints of "Yellow Jack" to avoid direct and subsequently received the and all I can say is that if I mention of yellow fever. following communication from were in a box office and had to

If the grousers will only go to the trouble of comparing these "The world has nowadays alleged bums with bus drivers, heard of hormones and the nance haberdashery clerks in the glands involved and is therefore better department stores and far less indignant about such men's shops and checkroom at things than it used to be, though tendants in most nightclubs and some of our playwrights are aprestaurants, I think they'll find the box-office people relatively have heard of them or, having parently not among those who so many impeccable Chesterheard, are shocked by the news.” fields. It was as silly for the author

one Betty Morrissey of its play be subjected to the nervous imcommittee:

"As your past work recommends you most highly to us, we are reluctant to disapprove of your choice of play, ‘Outrageous Fortunc.' However, the committee just does not share your regard for this piece nor do we consider it an especially fortuitous (sic) choice for programming purposes."

Maybe what the Equity Library Theatre play committee needs is not suggestions for good plays but for a good dictionary and an instructor in English. Too Much Ertha

PHYSICAL vitality is of course a valuable asset to an actor or actress as it is to any person, but it is something in the case of actors and actresses that is often better kept in the bank and not displayed on stage as part of their craft, though it must be admitted it is often regarded as a valuable part of that craft by the reviewers and is often considered by them an indication of the performer's histrionic genius. It was thus that Eartha Kitt in "Mrs. Pat-