No Time To Push a Downer Button

Street Scene Ushers In a Realist Trend For Stage Drama

Yes, Bert ... But Is It Pleasant?

A Mature George M. Cohan Back on Broadway

George M. Cohan was walking in Central Park and encountered an actor friend, Bert Lytell. Bert was high on a new Broadway play, Street Scene, by Elmer Rice. Best thing he had seen in years, to which Cohan replied, “Yes, Bert, but is it pleasant?” Cohan said Lytell didn’t get his question. “I guess people don’t understand me anymore, and I don’t understand them,” figured George M. as the two parted. Street Scene was a “realist” drama, staged first in 1929 and staying for 601 performances on Broadway. Dealing in despair among NY tenement dwellers, it was pure opposite to everything Cohan stood for by way of entertainment. “It’s getting to be too much for me, kid,” this from a man but in his early fifties when Street Scene and plays like it wrote finis to the Broadway Cohan knew, had in many ways invented. What strikes me of his reverie is that word “pleasant” --- is it pleasant? --- because here is what I ask myself before any-all unspool at Greenbriar. Who needs unpleasant, especially in stress time? Harpo once, and perceptively, said, “If it isn’t comedy, I fall asleep.” Could that be what kept him the cheeriest of Marx Brothers?

Remember The Day On The Road

Toward quest for a pleasant theatre-going experience, George M. Cohan saw a play called Remember The Day in 1935. He had lately enjoyed late-career triumph in Ah, Wilderness!, and afterward a revival of beloved Seven Keys To Baldpate, which he first adapted and starred in back in 1913. Remember The Day was sentimental recall to that era when Cohan was a boy. Its lead character was a schoolteacher whose pupil has a crush on her and is desolated to realize she loves the athletic coach. Twentieth-Fox told the story in 1941, Americana as realized by director Henry King and starring Claudette Colbert. The play had not been an inordinate success, but what it had was something George M. Cohan responded intensely to, as evidenced by his attending over and over. Cohan wrote a glowing boost and encouraged the play producers to use it with their advertising. He wanted everyone to admire this “beacon in a darkening world.” Cohan "lived every word of it. It was my play.” He felt that scribes Philo Highley and Philip Dunning had written Remember The Day just for him. How often, if ever, are any of us so touched by a play or film we have seen? Men of a certain age can be moved where a story transports them back. Are women as susceptible? I’ve adored Remember The Day since syndicated day of the 70’s, even if I never had a teacher so belovable as Claudette Colbert’s “Miss Trinell.” The Happy Years, for its fond recall of prep school shortly after a century’s turn, was meaningful for many. A later generation had American Graffiti and Animal House to transport them back. I’d call anyone lucky who has even one film they could truly call their own, “made just for me.” Many are movies I can live in for their length, but sadly none (so far) upon which to lay such personal claim.

To Cohan’s resolve that entertainment be “pleasant,” in fact his insistence upon it as he grew older, I more and more concur. Where life is fraught, as for many it presently is, who wants to push a downer button where selecting a show? Criterion yesterday announced The Irishman for Blu-Ray. I admired The Irishman, got through its three and a half hours of gloom, but that was nine or so months ago, and things are very different now (talk about fond reminiscence --- there are twelve-year-olds who will look longingly back to carefree days of 2019). Toward preserve of mental health, I now graze among westerns, costume folderol, and careful-vetted noir. To that add melodrama against exotic setting. Over a last two weeks then … two with Joel McCrea … Notice how others around him act, while McCrea just is. Name a player who performs with more conviction, especially upon a horse. Four Faces West is him at a summit, a western where no shot is fired (noted for that), nor fist thrown. Really good, as is Cattle Drive, where brat kid Dean Stockwell learns manly arts from Joel and roughhewn drovers. High among therapists I recommend is Joel McCrea. And Randolph Scott. Then early Hoppys. I have wondered if youth that grew up on westerns had it more together than we do. Now I am satisfied … yes they did, and do.

Also came Arabian Nights and Son of Ali Baba. These are what the greatest generation had between cowboys. Both please for reasons beyond narrative or pace, for each has faces we like to see do things we expect of them. Tony Curtis is Ali-Ali Offspring and Piper Laurie is the slave girl actually a princess. Hopeful contractees sniff around borders. It occurs to me that Hugh O’Brian was almost always mean, because, let’s face it, he had a mean face. Hugh was lucky to ultimately be Wyatt Earp. Arabian Nights was Universal’s first feature in Technicolor and opening round on Maria Montez with Jon Hall. Turhan Bey is also here. There is something always welcome about Turhan Bey. Lana Turner thought so. Shemp Howard plays Sinbad as if in modern day, an inspiration. Uni got so casual about these slipper-with-bell shows that by the late 40’s, even the camels talked. Maybe those will be along soon if Kino does well with Arabian Nights. Double-featured several nights ago was Appointment In Honduras and Escape From Burma, both jungly and with snakes plus tigers that eat bad men. Glenn Ford several times points out “devil fish” that will strip good or bad men clean of flesh, and I wondered if these were the same as piranhas that fed on Karin Dor in You Only Live Twice ("Bon Appetit," says 007). Appointment In Honduras has a cast up to necks in fetid water. Wonder how many got part way through work so grubby to regret taking the job. I might have gone over a hill in the face of such ordeal. Jacques Tourneur directed Appointment In Honduras. I have not yet seen a bad picture by him. Well, not truly bad (even War Gods Of the Deep has adherents, if not many). I thought the other title was Escape From Burma, but it turns out to be Escape To Burma, which suggests people in this movie don’t know if they’re coming or going, and frankly, neither did I. But fun is in the getting there. Benedict Bogeaus produced Honduras and Burma. I suspect he and the casts went to neither place. Occasion where great actors like Barbara Stanwyck, Robert Ryan, Glenn Ford, and Ann Sheridan really show their greatness is in stuff like these. They knew it too, and we should revere them for it. There is a DVD combo of Honduras/Burma from VCI. Such and others aforementioned will cure what ails you, being all for comfort and decidedly pleasant as I’m sure Yankee Doodle Cohan would agree.