Critical Moments

Motion pictures and plays, like food when you are hungry, are more attractive before you have tasted them. In anticipation, theatrical offerings are to me irresistable. For that reason I find it a great effort to be restrained in telling you about the forthcoming Broadway offerings and no doubt for the same reason I go sour after seeing these same attractions and find that they do not measure up to my preconceived notions of what they should be.

And now, having gotten off a bit of editorial comment, I can go into a short resume of what Broadway has to offer this week. At the Radio City Music Hall, “One More River” is being shown. Universal made this picture from the story by John Galsworthy, the English novelist who won the Nobel Prize. In the cast, headed by Diana Wynward, are Colin Clive, Frank Lawton, Lionel At-will, Jane Wyatt, Reginald Denny, Mrs. Pat Campbell and a host of lesser cinema stars. Over at the Strand they have no James Cagney picture, so the feature this week is “Housewife.” Bette Davis, George Brent and Ann Dvorak are the trio of leading players. Jean Harlow in “The Girl From Missouri” has been held over for another week at the Capital and at the Palace Leslie Howard, in the Columbia Picture “The Lady Is Willing,” is drawing some much-needed business into that one-time Temple of Vaudeville.

THE ROTHSCHILDS DOING WELL

Of course the attraction at the Rivoli this week will again be “The House of Rothschild.” This will be its fourth week in that theatre and business has been on the increase constantly. The wise boys who know their box office say that “Rothschild” could be a sell-out for six more weeks, but it will be taken out much sooner because it is holding up other United Artist attractions which can not find a showing place. It is thought that “Rothschild” will play two more weeks and will then be followed by “Bulldog Drummond Strikes Back.” George Arliss’s starring vehicle has, according to Variety averaged $30,000 a week, pretty near a record for the Rivoli.

THE LEGITIMATE ALMOST NIL

Only five shows left on Broadway: “Are You Decent,” “As Thousands Cheer” “Sailors Beware,” “She Loves Me Not” and “Tobacco Road.” Nothing new is due this week but the following week should find at least three new additions to the crop. “Life Begins At 8:40,” “Keep Moving” and “Hide And Seek” are the three opening blasts ready to sound off the Fall season . . . “Dodsworth,” the play made out of Sinclair Lewis’s novel of the same title which ran so successfully through the Winter and Spring and which closed in June so that Walter Huston, its leading man could play the Summer circuit, will reopen on August 20 at the Shubert Theatre.

OTHER PLAY NOTES

Bernard Bercovici will have a play “Short Story” produced by Crosby Gaige sometime during the Fall. Bernard is not related to Konrad Bercovici, the novelist and short story writer . . . Eva Le Gallienne who has been absent from Broadway too long will revive “The Swan” very soon . . . The oldtime melodrama, “The Drunkard,” which plays in a renovated church on East Fifty-fifth street, where patrons are served with free beer, continues its profitable run with no indication of patronage falling off.