Critical Moments

This past week was like the seven days before Christmas for the boys and girls who stand behind the grilled windows in our houses of amusements. Only one new show. “Furnished Rooms.” broke into the “legit” column and although “sorrell and Son,” “Little Man What Now?”, and a score of other new films hit what is vulgarly known as “The Main Stem,” the Memorial Day celebration and the call of the beaches and sun kept most of the patrons away from playhouses.

There was a time when June meant an almost complete cessation of theatrical activities, but that was before cooling systems were invented. Since the advent of that innovation, movie houses have become a haven for those who seek relief from the heat. Once, when the thermometer started to reach the upper registers, people headed for any place where a whiff of air could be captured. They shunned the broiling white light district but now even the self-respecting neighborhood movie house has its guarantee of “twenty degrees cooler inside.” Why the legitimate theatres do not install these refrigeration systems is just another of the thousand things I will never be able to understand about the show business. It can’t be because theatre patrons leave town for the summer. New York is still, for outsiders, the greatest summer resort in the country. Some day producers will legalize that the best show loses a great deal of its entertainment value when an audience sticks to its plush chairs and wllts in a ninety-degree temperature.

JACK BENNY TO STAR; OTHER THEATRICAL ITEMS

Jack Benny, who to me is one of the liveliest and most consistently funny of the radio comedians, will star in a new revue in the fall. It sounds like an all-Jewish affair, written by George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind, produced by Sammy Harris and entitled “Bring On the Girls.” Jack recently left for Hollywood, where he will make a few pictures…

One of the brightest things in “The Milky Way,” now current at the Cort, is the acting of Leo Donnelly, who plays the part of the fighting milkman. He is out of the cast because of illness and his part is being taken by Hugh O’Connell, who regularly played the part of the not-too-honest prizefight manager. Donnelly is expected to return to his role shortly.

“The House of Rothschild,” with George Arliss, by far the best picture of the year, will close its long run at the Astor Theatre in three weeks. If you can’t get to see it within that time, wait a few weeks more and it will be booked into the popular-price houses. Certainly it is a picture you cannot afford to miss.

I suppose you have seen it, but anyway this is a word to warn you that Clark Gable should not be missed in “It Happened One Night,” now running at the third and fourth-run neighborhood houses…

Harmon and Ullman, who produced “Men In White” and “The Milky Way, “have some very serious material in the offing for the Fall, but more about that a non…

Another picture which is off Broadway but which should soon be around the corner is “Little Miss Marker,” the Damon Runyan story starring little Shirley Temple, who is unquestionably the most natural and cutest (I hate the word) child actress of the decade. With Adolphe Menjou as the “cheap skate” gambler and a cast of Broadway “sports,” this is one of the most amusing and entertaining light entertainment cinemas I have seen since the last Zazu Pitts picture…