Critical Moments

No fewer than forty-five pieces of household furniture go into the barricade which is created each night on the stage of the Civic Repertory Theatre by the embattled Negroes in “Stevedore,” the play by George Sklar and Paul Peters, which is still one of the hits of the season.

The erection of the barricade takes only four minutes of the scene, and everything has to be timed perfectly in order to get it done in time for the attack of “Mitch’s gang.” Furthermore, the barricade has to be solid enough to hold a man. Ray Yeates climbs over it twice at built up higher than a man’s head, he has to find a toehold.

ENGINEERING FEAT

This scene was a bit of an engineering feat for Michael Blankfort, director of “Stevedore.” He worked out an ingenious scheme which worked so well that very little rehearsal was necessary to “set” the placing of forty-five separate props. The plan was to build the barricade backwards. Mr. Blankfort and the stage hands assembled all the furniture-which had been gathered enthusiastically from Harlem homes by members of the colored company. Then they constructed the great pile, using the peddler’s wagon, the sewing machine and a heavy chair as key pieces. The numbered each piece in the order in which they laid it on the pile. Then they called the company in and took the barricade apart, assigning the last bedstead fiest to the actor who there after was to put it in place just before the battle starts. After that it was only a question of setting the cues for each piece to enter.

The total number of properties in the last scene is 145. They were gathered from junk stores, friends’ cellars, pawn shops and back yards in Harlem. The weapons used by both sides account for most of them. “Old Betsy,” the “hoss pistol” which Alonzo Fenderson is sent scurrying to borrow, and with which Georgette Harvey, as “Binnie” shoots the “red-headed black blank” in the high moment of the play, has quite a history. A “hoss pistol” is one of such size and caliber that a man can’t tote it in his belt, but straps it to his saddle instead. Since they were most popular in Indian fighting days in the West, it was not easy to unearth one in New York City. Miss Myers finally discovered a decrepit example on Second avenue, which everyone agreed would probably destroy anyone who tried to fire it. Patient gluing and welding finally restored the stock and an old shot-gum barrel was superimposed. It takes special shells but it barks loudly without fail eight times a week. However, the property man is beginning to worry. The show has lasted much longer than the producers thought it would and the old decrepit pistol doesn’t look as though it could stand the pace.

MORE HISTORICAL PICTURES

Elsa Lanchester, who in private life is the wife of Charles Laughton and who played one of the wives in Laughton’s picture, “The Private Life of Henry VIII,” will make her American screen debut in the M-G-M production of “Marie Antoinette,” a “colorful historical document,” as the film company calls it.

BOTH SIDES OF THE FENCE

The following note is too beautiful to touch. In all its simplicity I set it down for your edification, to show you how picture concerns gingerly handle anything that might possibly be classified as being over the heads of people with a mental age of six.

“‘We Live Again’ was announced in Hollywood by Samuel Goldwyn as the new title for Anna Sten’s second American picture, in which Fredric March will be costarred. Based on Tolstoy’s famous “Resurrection,” the new screen version has nothing in common with the two earlier pasteurizations of the novel.

“Goldwyn feels that since his new title is fairly synonymous with Tolstoy’s original, it will offend no admirer of the great Russian novelist and humanitarian.

“At the same time the rousing, optimistic tone of the new title emphasizes that the story has none of the gloom and despair often considered characteristic of Russian fiction, and that it is as joyous and jubilant love story.”