New Plays in Manhattan

Heat Lightning (by George Abbott & Leon Abrams; Abbott & Dunning, producers). George Abbott can collaborate on good plays (Broadway, Coquette) as well as bad ones (Lilly Turner). His current production, neither good nor bad, is laid in a filling station on the edge of a U. S. desert. Peddling gas and oil to itinerant Mexicans, Reno divorcers, old folks on their way to die in the elephant valley of California, is the business of Olga (Jean Dixon, minus the acerbity so brilliantly displayed in Once in a Lifetime) and her young sister Myra. Surprised and shocked is Olga when her sinister onetime boy friend (Robert Gleckler of Broadway) arrives and, snarling out of the side of his mouth, demands a hideout for himself and young accomplice. By the time the curtain falls, Olga has shot the bad man, regenerated the accomplice.

Murder at the Vanities (by Earl Carroll & Rufus King; music & lyrics by Edward Heyman & Richard Myers). During a matinee of the eleventh edition of the celebrated Vanities, a chorus girl abruptly stops kicking her neat legs and begins to scream. In the orchestra pit the music dwindles discordantly to silence. Directors and managers rush out to investigate. Cause of the disturbance is a pretty girl who, cradled on a rack of scenery pipes, is soon let down on the stage and found to be dead. Although attired in one of the production's costumes, she does not belong to the company. Bruised and burned with acid, the victim still clutches a corsage of orchids attached to which is a note in German threatening, of all people, the girl whose scream discovered her.

Thus begins Earl Carroll's current show, a melange of melody and melodrama. Thriller Author Rufus King (Murder by the Clock, Somewhere in This House) has not concocted a murder mystery which would stand on its own scarey merits. Producer Carroll has not provided quite so lavish a treat for playgoing eyes and ears as in past years. But the combined Carroll-King offering does entertain.

James Rennie (Alien Corn) comes on the stage, a picture of self-confidence, as Inspector Ellery, recognizable as Author King's capable, dinner-coated stock character Lieut. Valcour. Inspector Ellery & staff turn the theatre upside down, invade the musicians' room, wardrobe room, property room, and even, amid terrified squeals, the backstage quarters of the naked ladies of the ensemble. They question everyone: unholy Siebenkase (Bela Lugosi of Dracula); Madame Tanqueray, the wren-like wardrobe mistress; bug-eyed Billy Slade, impersonated by Ben Lackland. As usual, Mr. Lackland is playing the part of a rich young man with a Lot to Explain. All the giggling girls, comics and doormen have been interviewed when Inspector Ellery comes at last to the temperamental diva, Sonya Sonya. The diva turns out to be Olga Baclanova, a fullblown Muscovite who in recent years has adorned the films. During one of the lulls in the investigation she appears, in a white satin gown which shimmers and hints, to sing with a somewhat uncertain falsetto a song called "You Love Me." Miss Baclanova tells Inspector Ellery: "I read men like books."

"Do much reading in bed?" asks the suave detective.

A bewildering conclusion is reached with the aid of a comedian named Billy House who is as incredibly fat behind as before and who, constantly hungry, at one point requests "a steak so big you can milk it." The music is indifferent but an extraordinarily graceful young man named Paul Gerrish performs equilibrial miracles on a pair of roller skates. And Producer Carroll's "Most Beautiful Girls in the World," so pretty that it seems a pity they have to work, keep very little of themselves secret. Culminating the fan number ("Did you ever see such fans!" leers Comedian House), a Miss Gay Orlova arises attired in just barely enough (6 sq. in. of cellophane) to keep the police from stopping the performance.

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