New-York tribune., 1919-06-08
BY Haywood Broun


musical comedies. A serious playwright
hardly needs organized encouragement
AS q rule, he burns to express some
thing, and though he may never reach
the stage nobody can keep him off
paper. 1t is not possible to starve
stm out. nor to check him permanently
With refusa1S Humorists ara hardly
so stanch. Unless people laugh at
their jokes they grow gloomy and
make no more.
Now, there can be little question that
the average musical comedy lacks hu-
NOR. Since AIDE stopped writing them
we can think of no unquestionably first
class humorist who has turned his tai
ents to musical plays. Nor are the sec
ond class men numerous. Who belong
in the list, except Cohan and Bolton
and Wodehouse and Rennold Wolf? For
a long time the tradition of the Ameri-
can theatre was that all musical COM
edy books should be written by Harry
B. Smith. The few that he did not
write were somewhat unworthy imita-
tions of his style. Conditions have
improved a little, but not enough The
writing man is still too small figure
in the musical comedy world Often
he is called in after the music has been
written and the scenery painted. AS
q rule, he is mmoned just before the
costumer, but even this does not al
ways hold good. His rewards are fire.
quently insignificant, compared to those
of the other collaborators. We have
seen scores of shows in which the
written text could not have cost one
third as much, even at the end of a
long run, as the gowns. A dress, of
course, may be purchased outright,
while a good joke goes not gathering
royalties, which may explain the mana
gerial prejudice against high priced
humorists.
The objection may be made that the
man who goes to a comic opera is
more interested in the visual appeal
than in the spoken word. We do not
think it sound. Will Rogers, placed in
the middle of the most gorgeous of
our musical entertainments, never had
any difficulty in holding his own
against the Urban scenery and the
carefully selected showgirls. True,
there was more humor in the average
m monologue Of Rogers than in any one
of dozen entire musical shows. And
yet Rogers's gift for keen paragraphs
about contemporary events is by no
means unique. His method was ex-
traordinary, but his material would not
seem so overwhelmingly witty if com
petition was keener. He employed sat-
ire with excellent effect, and it is al
dies. With few exceptions our revues
neglect contemporary happenings. A
musical comedy author generally feels
that he has done his full duty after he
has written two jokes about prohibition
and one about Brooklyn. If the show
is to open in Boston, Lynn or Roxbury
is substituted for Brooklyn. We went
the other day to new revue which
satirized the contemporary drama by
putting on a burlesque of the court
room scene in Madame K"
Never have the opportunities been
SO great as to-day. There is, for in
stance, the fertile field Of the American
occupation of France, and not a single
American comic opera has begun to
approach this in anything like the
happy spirit of THE Better ole"
Bairnsfather's piece is probably not of
enduring value, but at least he was
shrewd enough to introduce real char
acterization, and in true portraiture
or thereabouts, there is ever so much
more fun TO be found than in Gus
tave Schwartzbioom. a pickle manu-
facturer," or "Gaston Camembert, a
waiter" or Lionel Montmorency Mar
maduke, from London" We trust that
Mr.. Schwartzbloom may go down into
oblivion for season or SO, but he
still appears In few manuscripts. and
his fellow caricatures are by no means
done with.
Undoubtedly there is no Gilbert writ.
ing for the American stage to-day, but
there are men skiltul enough to profit
by his method. Indeed, George Cohan
has done 30 in "A. Royal vagabond. "