Word: cowles
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...Acquaintance (by John van Druten, produced by Dwight Deere Wiman) is a treat for acting students. It puts two Big Names on the stage at once-Jane Cowl and Peggy Wood. They might try to mug each other out of the drama, but both have a full kit of the tricks of their trade and they show how mutually helpful such tricksters...
...Jane Cowl can make a crumpled handkerchief as much of a dramatic asset as Barrymore's profile, Leon Errol's legs or W. C. Fields's illuminated nose. She has plenty of chance to use one here, where she finds herself in a trying erotic situation...
...Manhattan novelist who has a paramour in her publisher's office. Unfortunately her old friend and sister authoress, Peggy Wood, has a young daughter who takes the paramour's eye and eventually his heart. In three acts full of adroit handkerchief work Cowl runs a gamut of politely contained emotions and achieves resignation in the end-with the help of old acquaintance. At one point, where she snuffles back her tears, she brings off a little masterpiece of nasal dramatics. Meanwhile Peggy Wood has given a witty picture of a blonde, bird-brained, overdressed, likeable soul...
...play itself is less notable than the team of Cowl & Wood. Possibly such a love tangle would stay on the tactful, mannerly plane where Playwright van Druten keeps it. But the chances are that sometime, somewhere, there would be more fumes and fervors than the play reveals...
...Acquaintance," which brings Lady Jane Cowl and Peggy Wood to Boston in a pre-Broadway opening, is a diluted mixture of "The Women" and "The Animal Kingdom" without that certain something which made those two comedies successful. Its plot tells at great length how an aging litterateuse, Miss Cowl, loses her last paramour. How she could ever have caught one must be classed as a deus ex machina. Miss Wood is convincing as the feline crony...