Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1931-09-13
Washington's Dramatic
Season Opens Tomorrow
Evening With New Play
Peter Flies High" at the National and Many Well
Known Players Have Roles-The Situation
IN New York-Other Stage Comment.
By w. H. Landvoigt.

! have failed in their duty-the New
| York Judgment of a play or pro-
duction does not seem to carry
the weight it formerly did. This
sometimes is due to the fact that
the wicked producer has a pub
licity staff that outhowls the
critics. Very often it has been
due to the fact that HagerStown,
Md, doesn't get the show as 1t
appeared in Herkimer, N. Y, or
Great Neck. Long Island. Some.
body once accused the Yankees OF
making wooden nutmegS. Per-
haps the hinterland believes New
York is suffering from its near
ness to New England, despite the
moral fiber of Boston censorship.
And maybe it is all because the
original New York casts that ap-
pear in the tank towns are only
dipped, as it were, and not the
genuine metal. Be the cause what
it may, it seems a pity that the
theater of brains, the theater Of
arts and talents, the theater that
used to give our much-ridiculed
ancestors keen delight and help to
smother a world of small troubles
needs so much in our own present
day! It would be appreciated If 1t
might come back repentant and
serious, bent upon being its real
self and without the barnacleS
that have sunk it to a very low
water line in the present day,
when bilge water is so apt to edge
over the sides.
! WHEN the silent movie found a
tongue, it leaped too quickly
to the conclusion that it was hu-
man. And that seems to be q
drawback both to the talking pic
ture and to legitimate drama. 1t
is certainly the reason for much
OF the abuse that is heaped upon
the preSent-day pictures. and
there seems to be gradually de-
veloping evidence that promoters
of the legitimate drama are large
ly to blame for it. The art OF the
picture screen and the art OF the
living stage are two separate and
distinct arts badly jumbled by
bunglers, and the mistake has
been intensified by egotiSm in the
movie world of direction and pro-
duction and by ignorance in the
! legitimate theater itself. Art has
been brutally sacrificed in both
for the sake of quick money re-
turns. It is pity, and yet what
he,o is there for the situation?
Even our own young people IN THIS
center of educational culture, with
probably more than so dramatic
organizations of one kind or an
other, get their ideas OF Theatre
art from the movies, and are
strangely intolerant about it. Yet
when pictures like the poor tabloid
reproduction of George ArlisS' ia
nous drama "Disraeli" came along,
when other gems of the theater
legitimate, although butchered
and twisted and turned sadly
awry from the originals have been
shown, these very same young
folks have crowded the theaterS
where they are shown and have
been exultant in their delight.
The worlds experience has shoW\
the value of the legitimate the
alter. The feveriSh, fitful, mad de-
sire for what is trying to be its
counterpart, but which decidedly
is not, is one of the things that
stand in the way of it's proud re-
turn to the spotlight which it once
enjoyed and which is its rightful
place among all mankind.
*
| A ND this brings us back to the
premier of peter Flies High"
at the National Theater tomorrow
evening. There may be found
nothing of dramatic greatness in
Myron C. Fagan's pleasantly, but
the fact that the flying is done in
the atmosphere of mendacity and
by an ingenious young ne'er-do-
we'll; that it is done by no less an
aviator than Glenn Hunter, who
has always flown clean and
straight in the past in a way to
swamp the Sympathies OF his au-
dience, and that everything prom
Uses well for an enjoyable real the
alter treat, there is every reason
to hope that those who know and
admire the charm of theatric art
will be on hand to lend encour-
agement to its re-entry into the
National Capital.