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Page Six

‘THE COLLEGE NEWS



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Years and Years Ago

‘ We have sadly neglected the Phil-
istine’s literary side in our attempt to
view Bryn Mawr through his eyes,
when it was young and unsophisti-
cated. Love stories were very much a

la mode back in nineteen hundred. The
tender passion seems to have disap-
peared of late, if not from our lives,
at least from our publications.



—>— corsinitiiens eypyeaptenaatagene”, WP -—— oi EN



{
i
have been shaken long enough over
the fire of learning, they burst into
nice fluffy kernels which—to complete
the simile—are eaten up as soon as
we go out into the world... ... If you
try to swallow anothet person’s
ideal in addition to your own, you are
very likely to choke yourself and die.”
“Choice epigrams fall from the lips
of the characters like pearls, similes

; Undeveloped ideals, and when. these



off with a thousand apologies to Poe,
and a few appropriate verses such as
“Quel abimo, quel abimo tu _ in
onores!” — A. de -Musset, and
“O, she has fallen into a pit of ink”—
Much Adb About Nothing. This story
is a very gory- affair,*full of mad
ha-has and exclamation points. “Mis-
ery is manifold,” it begins. . “The
world is shrouded in a pall of liquid
blackness. Blackness hovers over Tay-

ed: “Father, what is Bryn Mawr? oi

“Bryn Mawr, my gon,” replied Mr.
Holliday, removing his spectacles, ‘is
an institution for the enlightenment
of young womén where they make tea
every afternoon.” : t



THEATRE REVIEW



Continted from Page Two

i



sti e falls weeping about the stage and
does little else.:One feels no especial

sympathy for her; one cannot, not’

knowing -her;--In-the scenes on the
hotel veranda, with her guests, she
is remote, cold, unenchanting. The

fault is in part that of the play-*

wright; her dialogue is poor, and her
lines lack force. Yet Miss Fontanne
should be. able to inject some real ¢mo-
tion into the part; even her facial ex-

4 “Through Fire and Water” de- and figures of speech adorn their|lor tower and obscures the insignifi- deft touches an observing, clever, yet pressions are meaningless. It cannot
di scribes the typical heroine furbishing most trivial: communication,” as thi cant gables of the Infirmary.” The| kindly man. be that Miss Fontanne is unsuited to
herself up for the typical young man. Philistine critic puts it. She ends her | heroine has ‘a fearful monomania. “I| Alfred Lunt, as Stefan, gives us|tragedy; witness her superb perform-

Petes tinea oa a << Bh)

rie Rip eo 0s et

“Half an hour later a card bearing
the name of Mr. J. Hartley Harrison

__was lying on the study table and the

mirror reflected a délicate oval face,
made even prettier than usual by its
slightly, conscious expressions and a
red rose in the soft dark hair.” The
slightly conscious expression was
probably what got him. In 1935, we
bend our efforts toward looking as un-
conscious as possible, especially when
expecting callers.

They were very frank about ‘their
interests then. Etiquette for the Elite
advises the Timid. Freshman thus. —
“In punctuating the sentence you give,
‘I saw a young man yesterday crossing
the campus,’ I think I should make a
dash after the young man.”

Their attitude was pretty similar
to-our own in regard to pictures of
campus life by people who have never
lived it. They.criticize severely an
Elsie Dinsmorish sort of lady who
wrote a book about Smith College, in
which a freshman. discourses to ‘a
friend as follows: “Your idea of col-
lege, then, is that it resembles a huge

corn popper into which we throw our’

criticism with a ‘touch of .the college
spirit so conspicuous years ago:—“It
may be argued that Smith and Bryn
Mawr are very different, and that the
picture Miss Fuller gives us may_per-
fectly well be true of that.college. In-
deed we do know there is a difference,
and we cannot help feeling that there
is about our college an atmosphere of
muon greater dignity and earnest-
ness.” We. hope Smith took that in,
and digeated it properly.

The Philistine was much more leni-
ent in reviewing the Bacillus of
Beauty, another novel of campus life,
laid at Barnard this time. The tale
treats of an ugly undergraduate, who
becomes with the aid of a bacillus,
administered by the biology profes-
sor, the most beautiful woman in the
world. The ladies of 1900 apparently
preferred excitement to humdrum
moral value.

Everyone imitated all her favorite
writers with great enthusiasm thirty-
five years ago. “With apologies to
somebody or other” precedes a good
quarter of the Philistine’s stories,
plays and poems. The Crime starts





never was a happy girl,” she says.
“My baptismal name is. Heliodora. My
family name I suppress, though, alas,
they have doubtless changed it. Why
should they totter under the disgrace
of bearing my title—mine!—since I
languish in a padded cell in the asy-
lum of the Criminal Insane?” She
was in a: bad way when she first got
into college. “I entered—ha! ha!—
yes, I entered, but in what a fearful
bodily ‘and mental condition! My
forehead pale, my eyes sunken so as
to be almost invisible, my shoulders
bent like those-of:an octogenarian, I
entered these gloomy halls. . My
melancholy | eyes drove the professor
to the verge of lunacy, my dome-like
brown and sunken cheeks gave me a
look of feverish intellectuality.” And
so on to the horrid close.

Rollo at the Fudge Party is much
more cheerful: “Rollo,” said Mr. Hol-
liday, one fine morning, “brush your
hat and get a clean pocket handker-
chief. I am going to take you to Bryn
Mawr.”

Rollo did as he was bid and. when
they were seated in the train he ask-



a fine portrayal of a rather pathetic
animal. One feels the same sympa-
thy for him that one would for a
wounded beast, poignant, yet not in
the least human. In the first scene
of the third act, his reactions are
those of a suffering infant or dog, ir-
remediable and aching. As he enters
playing his accordion, the audience,

-|knowihg what is in store for him, is

moved by a pity that is akin to hor-
ror. This scene, rising to the point
of his committing suicide, is’ com-
pletely his.

It is Miss Fontanne ,.whose charac-
terization falters throughout. . She
seems unsure, out of sympathy with
the character she portrays. Obvious-
ly Linda Valaine is.supposed to be an
extremely attractive woman; we see
that.through the attitude of the other
characters. Yet nothing she does
warrants the near-reverence that she
is accorded, Forced to wear a red
wig, spectacles (and unbecoming
sports dressés, ‘the actress walks
apathetically through her role, with
little or no personality. In the scene
with Stefan, which should be hers,

ance in Elizabeth the Queen. . There
seems ‘to be no obvious or adequate

&xplanation for the actress’s failure .

to make something of her role.

Point Valaine as a whole is feeble
and unconvincing. Badly managed
scenes and generally poor dialogue,
except in the case of Mortimer Quinn,
make it lack reality.. There are sev-
eral elements in it that are .to be
found in many previous Coward
plays: Mrs. Birling, the oppressing
mother, illustrates on a minor scale
the theme of The Vortex; the novelist
is the same type of character as those
in Design for Living; the screaming
young Englishwomen have frequently
run across a Coward stage. We wish
Mr. Coward would cling to the type
of ~play in which he excels,—the light
sophisticated comedy. We “wish the
Lunts would find a better play where
Miss Fontanne could charm us by her
voice and gestures once again, and
where Mr. Lunt could be a human be-
ing. As it is, Point Valaine is un-
worthy of Mr. Coward and a waste of
time for the Lunts, as well as for the



audience. A. M.



——



The selection, buying and preparation of
the right kinds of, Turkish tobaccos
for making Chesterfield Cigarettes is

a business in itself .

Ww? have buyers in all the to-
bacco markets of Turkey and
Greece, including Xanthi, Cavalla,
Smyrna and Samsoun.

MEY Fh
a

~~.

And at Smyrna Chesterfield
has built the most modern to-
bacco plant in the Near East.
Here the spicy, aromatic Turkish
leaf is sorted and graded under the
eyes of our oWn tobacco men. |
Then it is put away to age in its
own climate for two years or more
to make it milder and better-tasting. |
When you blend and cross-blend
the right kinds of aromatic Turkish
tobacco with mild ripe home-grown — ff
tobaccos as we do in Chesterfield |
you have...

the cigarette that’s milder
_the cigarette that tastes better



” Handling Turkish sahecce li in
the Liggett & Myers modern
factory at Smyrna, Turkey.

iin. 4

fo

q MONDAY WEDNESDAY SATURDAY

; ANDRE

a LUCREZIA LILY oeeettiiers

Pe: “ BORI PONS —40 PIECE ORCHESTRA
' KOSTELANETZ ORCHESTRA AND CHORUS

9 P. M. (£. s. T.) —COLUMBIA NETWORK /