Word: hampden
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Othello. Walter Hampden is one of the most serious laborers for the better things of the Theatre. He is one of the few curators of the old things that are best. Therefore, when he brings back Othello, the honesty of his effort, the stimulation that such a play must give our stage is to be commended without stint. Granting, however, the sincerity and ambition of the effort, it must be said that Othello is in many places dull...
...first place, Mr. Hampden's version stretches across three hours and 30 minutes of the watcher's time. The play is simply not sufficiently invigorating to sustain the stubborn interest of the casual attendant. In the second place, the interpretation of Mr. Hampden, scholarly and earnest as it is, seems somehow to fail the Moor. He plays Othello resonantly and with determination. Always he plays it; never does he bring the suffering soldier to life. Furthermore, the Desdemona of Jeannette Sherwin is distinctly under standard. Iago (Baliol Holloway, Englishman) gives a curiously individual, irritating and yet undeniably admirable...
...people to whom any Shakespeare presentation is an educational essential, the production will be enormously worth while. To the rank and file who crowded so enthusiastically to Mr. Hampden's Cyrano de Bergerac, it is doubtful if Othello will abundantly appeal...
...Quite without warning a group of previously undistinguished actors chipped the shell off a hard boiled comedy and threw it in most amusing pieces to a greedy and appreciative audience. It was not the type of appreciation that Mr. Hampden or Mrs. Fiske would prize; it was the type of laughter whose artistic values are confined solely to the green and yellow curlicues which decorate U. S. Government currency...
Deliberations followed. It was decided to give an Academy gold medal to Walter Hampden, actor, "for good diction on the stage"; an Institute gold medal to Edith Wharton, author, for her achievements in fiction. Ossip Gabrilowitsch, son-in-law of Mark Twain, late Academician, played for the session. In the absence of Professor William Milligan Sloane, Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, chancellor, presided...