Word: jessel
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...current piece, "The War Song", George Jessel has tried to put over just one more play touching the recent unpleasantness. It gets off to a slow start and the first act is rather tiring, though from time to time the explosion of a good gag recharges the air. Eddie, the little East Side song plugger is drafted and-runs off to Armentieres, but that basic development takes almost an hour. There is of course, his sister's boy friend whom he distrusts, who he later finds ain't done right by her, and whom he chances to meet again...
There you have just about all the hokum ever used in plays about the war. Some of it falls pretty flat, too, but it is surprising how in the last two acts it manages to keep the play above water. Now and then Mr. Jessel breaks into song, and though the songs aren't much he carries them...
...first scene is in the Manhattan home of the Rosens in September, 1917. Eddie Rosen (George Jessel) does not want to go to war because he does not want the burden of supporting his mother (Clara Langsner) to fall to his sister (Shirley Booth). He is drafted, sent to France. In a Y. M. C. A. hut he meets his onetime sweetheart (Lola Lane), learns she has married Eddie's onetime pal and fellow song-plugger (Raymond Guion), both of whom are singing and dancing for the delectation of the troops. From that point the story fizzles into...
...sight unseen, but each role has been given to a thorough player. The sets by Yellenti include one of a scene in No Man's Land which must give an authentic impression of that hell to one who has never been there. Upon the square shoulders of George Jessel has been placed the task of carrying off the play's heavier moments-a task to which he is more than equal...
Careful program-perusers noted (among the credits for Mr. Jessel's clothes, etc.) this thank-you: "Soldiers in the second act, veterans of A. E. F., supplied through courtesy of U. S. Veterans' Bureau...