New Play in Manhattan

Shooting Star (by Noel Pierce and Bernard Schoenfeld; Crosby Gaige, producer). The authors and producer of this piece emphatically deny that it is intended to present a biography of the late Jeanne Eagels. Their denial appears to remove the last excuse for the production, for surely it is not in itself a proper vehicle for talented, orange-haired Francine Larrimore (Let Us Be Gay, Brief Moment).

Julie Leander (Miss Larrimore), a "redheaded guttersnipe." runs away from her road show, her husband and child after seeing Duse in Chicago in 1918. In Manhattan she offers herself and her services to a producer in return for a part in a smart comedy. Men she picks up and drops by the hodful until a strapping socialite, not unlike Miss Eagels' husband, Yale Footballer Ted Coy, does her wrong. A play not unlike Rain, called Port of Call, in which Miss Larrimore decks herself out as vulgarly as if she were about to play Sadie Thompson, furnishes the volatile actress immense satisfaction. She can tell the men in the play what she thinks of them. But soon physical illness leads her to take narcotics, and narcotics kill her, circumstances similar to those under which Miss Eagels died in 1929.

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