Word: playgoer
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Anyone so misguided as to disregard the Playgoer's advice to see Norma Shearer and Robert Montgomery in "Private Lives" when it appeared in Boston some while back, has been pityingly spared by the Fates; now he is furnished with another chance to see this happy interlude of infidelity and infatuation, which is now appearing at the University Theatre, in conjunction with Douglas Fairbanks' travel picture "Around the World in Eighty Minutes...
...Montgomery, newly-wedded, but not to each other, lead Reginald Denny and Una Merkel, their lawful mates, a merry chase through alpine scenes of photographic excellence. Sophisticated without being stilted, explosively theatrical without being either absurd or the least unconvincing, "Private Lives" stands at the top of the Playgoer's list of the season's comedies...
...filming "Around the World in Eighty Minutes" Douglas Fairbanks has made the most entertaining travelogue that the Playgoer has ever soon. The photography alone would recommend it highly, but this is only part. Mr. Fairbanks' running-fire comment, through starting out somewhat in the Graham McNamee vein, grows better and better as time goes by. Above all, there is an incredibly clever continuity to make a smoothly-flowing film out of disconnected scenes. Mr. Fairbanks is never at a loss to provide transitions: one moment he commands a gigantic map to appear on the floor, so that he can stride...
Other time-honored elements annoy the Playgoer. He denies that black-and-silver studio apartments and spirituous clinkings in the shaker can lend urbanity to commonplace repartee. He dislikes the glib patter that comes forth like a well-learned lesson from the actors' mouths. He misses that moment of hesitation which, in real life, attends the birth...
...only fair to admit that "Everybody's Welcome" is no more conventional than the run of musical comedies. The Playgoer is railing rather at the whole species. He thinks back to the brave days of Gilbert and Sullivan, of "Patience" and of "Pinafore." When the curtain rises on a new show, he recalls Sullivan's baton at the Savoy, and nostalgia overcomes him. He blows the froth off the new theatrical brew, looks within the stein, and finds it empty. Disappointment has made him crusty, and of the modern shows he applauds only "Of Thee I Sing," the one perfect...