New-York tribune., 1919-04-20
What Screen Comedy
OaUes The Dz'eaus

we, who never foresaw them, VIII
never guessed in the public disposition
that readiness, that cordial understand
ing which gave them a foothold whel
we offered them nothing but ou
groans? For If this year, in picture
of emotional appeal, we have been fet
mainly on much watered Cruel of {
temperature suggesting that it had beer
standing a long time on the steam
table, in comedy the screen has opened
TO Us whole orchards and daries OF
fresh delight, haven after haven Of
charm and sympathy, Of laughter .ant
observation ard kindness.
Between these two phases had oc.
Cured, of course, that beginning which
brought all the rest to pass; that phase
when we began scolding, "Well, they
see what the Drews are putting over
don't they? And they see how the
public simply eats it up. Can't any
Of the rest Of them take hint from
the Drews ?" And soon every one was
doing it! Not in stupid imitation, but
in a happy release to truths and jokes
they had perhaps long been longing to
show us but hadn't dared; the whole
world of experiment in human STUN
bles and grins and bright, easy tears
and comfortings had suddenly taken
| heart. This was what little more than
two years of Henry Minor and his wife,
Polly, of the standard implicit in the
trademark "Mr. and Mrs. Sidney
Drew" had brought about.
In the beginning it wasn't, as we re-
member, the dear Minors; it was just
the usual fussing husband and wife
there were even lingering traces Of the
typist and the mother-n-law. II would
be extremely interesting to know
whether from the start the authors
were looking forward to chance at
Henry and Polly, and these staler be-
ginnings were only feelers of the pub
lie pulse, or whether by mere fortu-
nate accident an embryo Henry and
Polly appeared in some sketch and
were so we'll received that the Drews
were encouraged to go on with them.
At any rate, it is now one Of the Sc
curest strands Of screen history that
they did go on, and that the public
followed as if they had been pied
pipers, as if it could never get enough
of the charmed life which, after all,
was so exactly its own life, only seen
over for it, shown to it with the sweet
est, funniest charm and truest knowl-
edge of the deep afectionateness and
kindly conscience which, in its scram-
Bile to get somewhere and back in
time for something else, it often SO
drearily and blinding1y forgets it has.
The Drews, in showing commonplace
life to commonplace eyes, justified it
to itself, and, at the same time, Knocked
and its faults by making them funny
enough and homelike enough for their
recognition to be at once endurable and
unavoidable. The Drew scenarios were
renee, the lightest emotion which could
bring no matter how tiny discord into
the life Of Henry and Polly, develop
the discord and resolve it-that was all.
Only the light emotion must be genu-
inc, the slight occurrence representa-
tive, so that the discord should resolve
not itself alone but the memories Of
hundred others in every audience. At
first these things used to happen be-
tween Henry and Polly in isolation, as
if they had only just moved into the
neighborhood, but presently there be-
gan to grow up about them q whole
suburban life, so human in general and
so American in particular that it is, for
the great majority Of US, the neigh
borhood we were brought up in, and
probably for all Of US it has at least
long seemed as if we had only to take
the trolley or the local to arrive In its
accustomed midst and know at once its
pleasant levels and the small, sharp
indentations of it's familiar mseries.
1t Is the pleasant levels which by
her own prettiness and common sense
and astutely feminine charm that Polly
usually walks; it is almost always she
who is left with the last word, the
wise gesture, the gracious little tri-
umph. And what d boomerang this
masculine chivalry Isl For, of course,
1t is to Henry, so opt to be stumbling
among the sharp familiar miseries, to
Henrys capacity for winding himself
up in difficulties and twisting himself
up in porturbations, in folles more SEN
s'tiVe though less graceful than his
wifc's, that our sympathy flies back
With a poigrancy that Polly never has
need of; we feel the safety in which
she lives and which is so largely con-
tributive to her delightfulness as be-
ing, after all, not wholly disconnected
with certain amount Of capacity in