Critical Moments

Bad plays, and by that I mean plays that are so obviously false and ridiculous that even the audience laughs at the efforts of the playwright and actors, are a great boom to critics. At such performances the fellows who keep you supplied with dramatic criticism sit bland and confident. They know that they can with perfect equanimity slash away and be absolutely correct. It is difficult when an audience seems to be enjoying an indifferently written and acted play to go back to the office and tell readers that they should not waste their time with the offering in question. It is equally hard to write that a certain piece is shallow, trite, worthless and not amusing when the echo of the audiences’ laughter still rings in your ears.

FURNISHED ROOMS, PERFECT EXAMPLE

Rayhilde Bruland’s “Furnished Rooms” which opened at the Ritz Theatre some evenings ago, is a perfect example of the sort of play that gives critics confidence. Whether or not it is still running as these lines are written I do not know, but it served its purpose beautifully. As the title might make you suspect, “Furnished Rooms” is a “comedy drama” about life in a rooming house, not a very good rooming house, one which seems to be make up entirely of hall bed-rooms. The villain in the piece is the owner of this “Rooms for Rent” establishment and he is as unpleasant a cur as ever earned a hiss. This unprincipled and lecherous fellow was fortunate. Many of his boarders were young, good looking girls who seemed to have a terrible time getting their rent money together. Did that bother our landlord? Not a bit-he had his own terrible methods of exacting payments and as this is a family paper I will not disclose the procedure he followed. Needless to say he gets what is coming to him. He tries to make one of the gals, but his son, who has returned from college and who is a Boy Scout at least first grade, comes to the rescue and in the course of events tells his old pappy just what he thinks of him. In addition one of the lady bearders who has been wronged by friend landlord gets her hands around a gun which of course brings the melodrama to a close.

Ballasted with sufficient beer one can get a perverse pleasure out of “Furnished Rooms,” but I don’t think many of us can drink that much beer.

“BORN TO BE BAD”

Twentieth Century Pictures a comparatively new company, has been consistently successful with their production, “Born to Be Bad,” the latest of their efforts. It has just reached town and is not quite up to standard, but it is not so bad. Starring Loretta Young and Cary Grant who are supported by Marion Burns and the young Henry Travers this is the picture written by Ralph Graves, the actor, and directed by Lowell Sherman. It deals with the subject of mother love and in a surprisingly calm and unsentimentalized fashion.

The plot concerns events in t he life of little Mickey whose mother (Loretta Young) is not all that she might be morally but is a loving mother. She has taught her son to cheat and steal. When he is hurt in an accident, she becomes hysterical over his condition. She finds that he has not been seriously injured and makes the boy play sick so that she can collect from the company that hurt him. It is over this incident that she meets Gary Grant who, although president of the company, was, cinema like, out driving the truck that hit the boy. He takes the child from her after the trial but Loretta fights back so hard that he brings the boy to his own palatial home and childless wife. I will forego the pleasure of telling you what ultimately happens.