New Plays in Manhattan

Marching By musically relates how first the Austrians and then the Russians took and retook Lemberg in the stirring days of 1915. During one of these swaps a handsome young Austrian (Guy Robertson) is wounded and left behind. Iron enters poor disabled Mr. Robertson's soul when he notices the lecherous glances with which the base Russian colonel is denuding Actress Desiree Tabor, a soprano with whom Mr. Robertson is in love. She is an Austrian countess. Somewhere during this part of the proceedings a file of Muscovites tramp in, begin singing "Light up! Take out your pipe and fill it to the brim--" whereupon they all start smoking cigarets. Marching By, in spite of its unconsciously jovial libretto, should get credit for some pleasant melodies by Jean Gilbert.

Child of Manhattan. There is a curious phonetic trait, found in certain parts of Brooklyn, which causes people to substitute the sound er for the sound oi. It is with one of these etymological freaks, a very pretty one called Madeleine McGonegal (Dorothy Hall), that Child of Manhattan by Preston Sturges (Strictly Dishonorable) is concerned. Miss McGonegal comes from a disadvantaged home in a neighborhood which she calls "Greenpernt." She is a dance hall hostess in a "jernt" named Loveland. At Loveland she meets a rich, self-contained young man who has come to see to what uses his property is being put. He takes her home, slips a $1,000 bill in her stocking, and soon after they have an "apperntment" at his pent house. Soon after, too, they have a baby, and the rich young man gallantly insists on marriage. Then the baby dies, removing the complication which brought about the union, and Miss McGonegal gallantly insists on divorce. After that the couple get back on the old basis.

The Sturges drama, subtitled "A Portrait of a Gal," is full of funny gags arising out of various lowly characters' mispronunciation. Its motivation is as silly as it is trite, but Child of Manhattan is not a play from which you would "recerl."

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