Word: lola
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...Blue Angel," Marlene Dietrich's first film, shows her at her leggy best. In this old film, revived at the Kenmore theater, she plays "Lola Lola," a singer in a small cabaret. This is exactly what she was before Director Josef van Sternberg "discovered" her. The film in its original 1929 version was silent, but a German sound track and English subtitles have been added...
...plot concerns Herr Professor Emanuel Rath, a teacher in the local high school, who finds that Lola Lola is distracting his students. He goes to the "Blue Angel" cabaret to catch the truants, but instead falls in love with Lola Lola. He marries her and joins the troupe of actors. Soon he is reduced to playing stooge for the magician. In one horrifying scene he is made to crow like a rooster on the stage while he watches his wife flirt with the strong man in the wings. He finally goes mad and, after an attempt to kill Lola Lola...
Come Back, Little Sheba (by William Inge; produced by the Theatre Guild) tells of a couple, married for 20 years, who should never have married at all. Doc had gotten Lola into trouble; afterwards the baby died, and the sexy, good-natured, empty-headed girl turned into a shiftless housewife, her mind on men, her thoughts in the past. Doc wound up not a doctor, but a chiropractor, and (until Alcoholics Anonymous took over) a drunk. His career blighted, his emotions blunted, he half sleepwalks through life. Then, discovering that their college-girl boarder is turning, like Lola, into...
...play tries hard to be honest, manages in places to be effective, has a fierce moment or two, as when at the end Doc clings for help, like a drowning man, to the wife who has made him drown. And as Lola and Doc, Shirley Booth and Sidney Blackmer prove a valiant acting team, bring a great deal that is human, perceptive, vivid to their roles...
...Come Back, Little Sheba is not a very good, or even a very interesting, play. It makes plain enough what it wants to do, but never actually does it, never communicates the awful internal bleeding of mismated lives, the blundering wastefulness of life itself. Possibly Lola is too shallow to allow of much probing. But the more complicated, frustrated Doc does need-to be probed. For one thing, is he the tragic victim of a single mistake, or a weak man almost bound to fail? Playwright Inge tends to substitute mere sympathy for insight, and to employ those little touches...