The Crimson Playgoer

To solid anti-new dealers, like myself, this little farce on the current situation in this great country of ours provided more than a pleasant evening of entertainment. That master card, Smiling Jack Benny, friend of all the little boys down whose throats Jell-o is forced each evening, is the real clown of the show, playing the part of the poor banker just out of Atlanta after a five year vacation there for his noble deeds in the great days of '29. With him as co-partner is a man who threatens to replace Victor Moore as the typification of American stupidity. Porter Hall as this unfortunate "Charlie Meredith," is all that any stooge could be, and he adds to his part tremendously by magnificent acting in a role which is an easy one to overdo.

The play, by Kaufman and Ryskind is a beautiful piece of satire on the RFC and the men who run it. Of the two professors who come to investigate Benny, his partner, and their staff of six hotcha girls who run the Black Creek Railroad, one is a professor of anthropology at Columbia, and the other of Hebraic Languages at Harvard. These trusted scholars are delightfully duped by Benny and friends until they are accosted by a man who says that he is an agent for the Department of Justice, whereupon one of the chorus girls pipes up "What's Justice?" When the Justice man informs Benny that he doesn't own the railroad after all, that ingenious wag turns the whole thing into the Black Creek Farm on top of a Pont House in New York, and then goes with great diligence into that great industry of "not raising anything."

The lines are excellent and truly worthy of their authors, and the acting is really fine, especially on the part of that old bowl full of Jell-o, Jack Benny. It probably is a sure sign of New York success that the play did not raise many laughs from a very dull Boston audience who seemed to miss half the cracks.