GERMANY: Happy End

Berlin first-nighters gathered last week in the Theater am Schiflbauerdarnm for an opening of note. Flimsy programs purchased from elderly ushers announced that they were to witness Happy End, a Comedy of Gang Life in Chicago by Elizabeth Hauptmann with music by Kurt Weill and lyrics by Bert Brecht, German translator of John Gay's immortal Beggars' Opera. An italicized footnote explained: "the comedy is based on a story by Dorothy Lane which appeared in The J. L. S. Weekly, published at St. Louis, Mo."

Germans in the know whispered to friends that there isn't any "Dorothy Lane," or any J. L. S. Weekly, that the play had been entirely concocted by Elizabeth Hauptmann, pungent Socialist playwright (no relation to Playwright Gerhart [Sunken Bell] Hauptmann ), and that the last act would be etwas famos! ("swell!").

Politely the audience sat through scenes showing Chicago gangsters in a loop dive, other scenes of the same gangsters being converted "to the religion of Henry Ford,'' by a bawdily singing Salvation Army worker. Then the curtain rose on the third act, entitled "In the Cathedral of the New Religion." The scene was a church interior. Over the high altar hung a sign "BETHLEHEM STEEL IS BEST." In the wall were three enormous glass paintings, prominently labeled, depicting three white-robed and haloed saints. There was a mummy-like SAINT JOHN (Rockefeller), a scrawny SAINT HENRY (Ford) and a blue-nosed SAINT PIERPONT (Morgan). From an organ suggestively marked THIS ORGAN LUBRICATED BY STANDARD OIL came chords. A choir took up the chant: "Hallelujah, Rockefeller! Hallelujah, Henry Ford! Hosannah, Morgan!"

They got no further than the first stanza. Outraged bourgeois first-nighters bellowed "Outrage!" "Sacrilege!" Socialist defenders of the play shouted "Splendid!" "Colossal!" Terrified for his theatre, the manager rang down the curtain, sent for the police.

Reporters rushed to see Bert Brecht, lyricist of Happy End, found him complacently reading a pile of press notices. Said he:

"There has been some talk of the police closing our play, but the play will not close. The 'saints' will remain too, only we will make some changes in the text to make it absolutely clear that the play is anti- capitalistic, rather than anti-American."