The Wilmington morning star., 1946-11-08
As Pegler Sees 1t
By WEsTBROoK PEGLER


By PEGLER
Copyright, by King Features Syndicate, Inc.)
NEW YORK, Nov. 7.-Throughout 1.-THE
Icenan Cometh," a play, l think, although
Eugene O'Neil may have meant it as a hoax,
I was thinking that Miss Sally Wilson, of
Washington, handled the same general idea
better when, at the age of eight, she wrote
one. and unfinished at that, called Grand
mother Has Gone to the Bar" Grandmother
was an old souse who said 'huc" instead OF
the conventional "hic," a modern form since
adopted by shameless plagiarists, and there
was an offstage mystery woman, the mother
Of Glover and Brother, the children of the
piece, who had wandered off the night the
big gas-tank busted in Clayton and just kept
on going. Sally Wilson never accounted for
her and that was why she considered that
her play was unfinished. But I think that, in
view of the liberty that O'Neill, the master,
takes in 1.-THE Iceman," she was too exactlng.
His play never even starts. And, after five
hours OF Hesperus recitations by a team OF
character men and a trio OF schoolgirl types
giving hearsay impressions of fallen women
of the period of 1912, I left the opera house
feeling like a man who has put in three
weeks on a hung jury in a civil suit about
a real estate title, and wandered up to the
box-otfice to draw my pay. They didn't even
buy our dinner during the recess after the
first act, which starts at $50, but they didn't
lock us up for the night to fight it out, SO
an optimist might say it could have been
worse. But l an no optimist and that isn't
what I say.
Here is a play, or anyway, a show, In a
dirty old West Side saloon about a roomtul
of buns with souls who declaim in turn, sub
side, revive to below again, and convey no
meaning except that hangover hurts and
booze relieves hangover, as though that were
news. Anyone who perceives any message has
a right to regard himself as a co-author and
put in FOR royalties. And anyone who believes
that such sentimental comradeshlp and inner
nobility ever existed among such a company
would readily send a money-order right away
for a temporary bargain offer in electric belts
or the mail order, home-study course in car
looming, song-writing or how to be a magician
Or a detective. Certainly such company exr
listed in the time that O'Neill hit upon, prob
ably hoping no survivor lived to fault him,
in Diamond Dan O'Rourke's on the BoWery
and in the PIP. saloons in Chicago whose
owner was said to be one Pontius PLATE
Prontovich, but probably wasn't. 1t still does
and in p%rettier saloons. But such a lot of
talk and speaking as the great man has made
up out of his head should come within the
purvieW of the Fair Practice Act, which once
was invoked, and in Mr.. Hoover's presidency,
too, against a Hollywood producer who tried
to palm of a tribe Of respectable American
Afros from the casting bureau as Melanesian
idyllists of the Al Jolson, Or Yaki-Hula, con-
cept. The Department of argued
that there was a limit beyond which it was
unfair even for a licensed fictioneer to i'm
pose On the peoples ignorance. Il that prece-
dent stands, 'Neill is as good as In jail now.
Buck Grouse and Howard Lindsay sent me
a nasty wire, but Grade B, as repartee, last
spring, the occasion of my last review of the
drama because, as I said, l hadn't seen their
State OF The Union" but repudiated the sit
uation they assumed, on the basis of the
scenario. Had l felt equally aggrieved, l
could have wrought a s~hapelier denunciation
of the ties of old friendship in hot oatmeal
with my finger and without an accomplish.
But I have an advantage because practice
makes perfect, and I produce five days a
week, whereas people who write plays work
by the calendar. not the clock and, like the
Cherry Sisters, behind a screen which forbids
the audience to confound their puppets with
the wry riposte. O'Neill took ten years on
The Iceman' and still it is slap-dash. l had
said also that the client OF the drama, once
committed to a night at the make-believe,
was stuck. not only for the price of his tickets
but for an evening~of time. and I renew the
protest, with a bonus in this case. For here
the victim hurries to formation at half-past-
five, overweight by insinuations o. some
thing fairly special, and, at seven o'clock,
when the intermission falls, and still, at 10:45,
when the lights go out, he is wondering when
the reticent author is going to tell him what
he was going to say. Recess would have been
a good time to abscond, but I wasn't sure
l had enough points, hope springs eternal and
waste not, want not.
I hope people won't think the less of me
along of this here.
I tried hard but, as the night wore on, I re-
membered when Walt Disney was making the
great confusion which he finally called Fan
tasia," the show was really hall a dozen sep
arate and independent but gorgeous doodles
which he hitched together in a production
piece, and damn the dolts who had to ask the
meaning. So / thought it served him right the
morning after the opening on Broadway when
one of our cosmic pundits, shrewd beyond de-
by subtle deviltry, discovered in Gan
tasia' a sinister fascist message in the secret
language of the Copperhead, the Tory and the
Association of Manufacturers.
And Chicago needn't mock New York for
seeking social significance in '"The Iceman."
to jest at wounds, half the population of
Chicago once upon a time spent days gaWking
at an eagle on the Montgomery Ward tower.
which was only an old g%argoyle after all, and
some of them swore they saw it move. True
that was a free show and 1.-THE Iceman'' isn't.
but that is initiation for you and you can put
me down as one who sWears that The Ice
man. doesn't even tWitch.
v10"