Evening star., 1941-11-04

eyed. frog-voiced pal, Fluffy Adams
Jerome Chodorov and JOSEPH
Fields. who last season adapted my
Sister Eileen" from the same source
book. are the authors of Junior
Miss They have done an admir-
able job of transferring Sally Ben
sons lovable mink to the new me-
dium without the loss of a single
one of her engaging, maddening
eyed, wonderful, laugh-provoking
little Miss FiXit who can create q
family chaos that a land mine might
envy. Her portrait is completely
unretouched, as warm and honest
and vibrant with life as only Is
years old can be.
The incident of Junior Miss" is
as honey as your old bedroom slip
pers, and as easily recognizable 1t
has to do with Judy's instant leap
ing to the false, funny and poignant
premise that her fathers kiss for
his young secretary is the kiss of
death for the Graves family happi-
ness. 1t is crisis" just as Judy
has seen crises in dozens of movies,
and it is thing demanding imme-
dlate and drastic action. The NOV
les. to which she constantly alludes
and with an impressive specificity
also have told her just what to do
namely. to throw the girl together
with an unattached. attractive
young man. He materializes in the
form of an uncle whose absence for
many years has led Judy to the ro-
mantle hallucination that he has
been in prison for a series of des-
perate crimes
From that point on affairs in the
Graves family go berserk, not as
smoothly berserk as they will when
the authors and Director Moss Hart
have worked a bit more over the
material, but happily nonetheless.
While Judy and Fluffy, a pair of
eiggling arch plotters if there ever
was one, are the most amusing
characters in Junior Miss" they
are far from the only ones. Run
ming in and out of the Graves home
are series of young men whose
truth to life is hilariously funny.
Most of them are friends of Lois,
Judy's naughty high school senior
sister, a girl with a beautiful gift
for collecting gaping, awkward,
tongue-tied young men. They are
used very impressively in series Of
"frsts." first date. first cigarette
case. first dinner jacket, ETC., and
1t is very wise of the authors to
have stuck so honestly to the es-
tablished pattern. In their wiser.
more worldly ways mother and
father are another humorous pair;
so is fathers pompous, apoplectic
law partner and the laconic, hard
bitten maid whose mastery of back
talk is one more fine ingredient for
the entertainment of Junior Miss"
The respect in which the play is
most singularly blessed is in having
Miss Peardon to play the role of
Judy. She is instantly winning by
the simple fact of being in that
phase which blunt fathers call "the
fat one" To that charm she adds
all the others the part needs, the
deadly little girl seriousness, the de-
termination to be grown up, the use
Of . strange and colorful vocabu-
larry understood only by its own
kind and a tolerant pity for her
cropping elders. It Is q very WON
derful thing but not much more
wonderful than Miss Lonergan's i'm
personation of the wacky Fluffy.
The moments the two have together,
exchanging lurid handbags, figur-
ing out what a movie solution of
their problems would be or giggling
at the antics of their elders are
Invariably rich with comedy.
Keeping the children from run
ming entirely away with the party
are some effective adults, Barbara
Robbins as Mrs. Graves, Philip Ober
as Mr.. Graves, Matt Briggs as the
law partner. Paula Laurence as the
cynical maid, Francesca Bruning as
the secretary and Alexander Kirk
land as the uncle suspected of