The Wilmington morning star. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1909-1990, 1945-01-18
BY WEsTBROOK PEGLER

BY WESTBROOK PEGLER
Copyright 1945, by King Features Syndicate.)
CHICAGO, Jam 17-Let me tell you about
the play am going to write on my day off.
This play is going to be sequel and reply
to ]. P. Marquands George Apley show in
which by prearrangement, tradition and, you
might say, predestination, the son of stuffy,
artistocratc Boston family gets married to
kind of scraWny, watery cousin OF his named
Agnes, but his kid sister takes the fence in
fawnlike leap and pairs herself OFF to brash
intellectual squirt from New York and goes to
live happily with him in Greenwich village.
The Apleys are exaggerated snobs who wear
their ears very close together and Mr. Mar
quand gives them a good going over, which is
all right with me, altho l must say that as
game for social satirist, this kind are strict
ly barnyard ducks. Along in the middle OF the
piece, the kid arches his neck at an off-stage
character named Myrtle something whose old
man comes from Kansas City and runs tool
and die business in Worcester and the Apleys
are in mood to turn his picture toward the
wall when My-tle's paw he breaks up the play,
himself, on the ground that they come from
two utterly incompatible breeds of cats and
never could be happy together.
We leave the young fellow settled down to
stately monotony and tradition with Cousin
Agnes and are told that the kid sister and the
New York fellow, Yale-rah, by the way, and
lecturer on literature, are getting along
swell
Well, that is Marquands story and when
you are weaving pieces out of your fancy
you have a right to knot the ends any way
you like, but, in my play, we are going to do
some peering and prying and discover very
different state of affairs down in Greenwich
Village. We going to find out that in the
Apley girls new league the standards of con-
duct, thought and honesty are very inferior to
those of Beacon Street. Boston, and I am not
sure but that we set her and her husband to
lally-ga gging just by way of self-expSession
and write in a Hungarian dream-reader with
a clientele of arty neurotics and generally no
account and daughters of WeH-to-do par
ents who think they are repcessed because
they aren't encouraged to talk dirty and go
out sleeping around. We are going to take the
position that those restraints, imposed by re-
ligion and civilization, which Hungarian
dream-doctor calls inhibition, are, in fact
morals, and play is going to trot out sew
eral nasty-minded females to sling Freud at
the audience until, toward the end all the de-
cent people in the house posed to tear
home and plunge into bath of nothing milder
than sheep-dip.
These mattress-backs all patients of the
Continental phrenologist and they keep on 60
ing to him. and their successive husbands, too
because they know that instead of telling them
they ought to be ashamed of being such BUNS,
he is going to prescribe adultery and boozing
as normal releases from abnormal and artl-
fetal rules imposed by such as the Apleys
We are going to make him a very sinister
and powerful monster, and l don't know but
that we might steer into his trap sucker with
a tremendous, and more or less ll-gotten for
tune and rotten family history, who is SOL
EMMY advised to buy up a great radio chain
and express himself by saturating the air with
Communist propaganda in the name OF de-
mocracy We will point out that a lot OF mock
intellectuals of this set, who are forever yelhng
up this and that formula for solidarity with Eu-
rope and permanent peace, can't even get
along with husband or wife more than three
years and casually breed numerous sets OF
kids and park them around in due schools on
the pretext that this gives them advantages
when the fact is that they can't be bothered
to give them their raising and don't want them
asking questions about what happened to tnelr
last daddy
Yes, and insamuch as Mr.. Marquand tossed
a bow to Felix Frankfurter in his early days
at Harvard with the Apelys aghast at SUCH
radicalsm we will write ourselves the part OF
a nasty conniv.ng, clever, avarlclous ana Ut
terlv unscrupulous swine who sat at FRANK
furters feet at Cambridge, loaded the Amer
lean government with hundreds OF other ao-
VenturOuS trarnpS ana then TeS1sueu W peSoiie
a profiteering lobbyist in the government con-
tract business and fixer who can call up the
Depa rtrnent of Justice and tell them, not ask
them. to settle his clients troubles this way
or that. We will have some arguments, done
in naraphrase of some of Frankfurter's curly
oninions and thorough treatment OF his die
tim that the law doesn't necessarily mean
what if saws so that when fellow sees mo
Parking sign he can't rightly tell whether ne
should or shouldn't without asking a lawyer.
Contrary to MI Marquands purpose, found
rovsef beginning to like those Apleys for their
good Qualities and, in spite of their bad ones,
and detesting the literary squirt for charac-
teristics not written into him by the author
but which nevertheless, l have seen there in
the course of considerable observation in the
arts. our government and our education.
know the jerk.
And l am not taking Marquands word for
it that he and the pretty little Apley number
people of their character might be happy new
ertheless.
won't argue whether young Apley and
Agnes we're in love just victims of social
and hygenic matchmaking but in the case of
the kid sister what say is that it was a
plain, obvious case of ants-just ants
An office seems to be the handiest place
for some people to look for sleep thew Loot
the night before.
truck crashed through the front of bar.
oersnop IN an Indiana town and no one was
hurt. perfect place for close sh,v.