The Theatre: New Plays in Manhattan: Nov. 6, 1933

The World Waits (by George F. Hummel; Frank Merlin, producer) is a depiction of life in the murky base cabin of the Hartley Antarctic expedition, toward the end of a two-year stay. It resembles Journey's End in having an all-male cast and a rigid youth (Philip Truex, son of Actor Ernest Truex) whose gibberings point up the venomous fortitude of the others. To forestall suspicion which might have occurred to auditors who knew that Correspondent Russell Owen of the Byrd Expedition had helped with the script and setting, the producers warned in the program that The World Waits is based on fact "in no sense other than purely creative." Commander Hartley (Blaine Cordner), an affable, scout-masterish publicity hound, is in such a glow over U. S. annexation of Antarctica that he is not aware his men call him a tinplate hero behind his back, or that his pompous planting of flags and food caches has consumed precious time which might prevent the relief ship from getting through the fast-knitting ice. When radio messages from the ship abruptly cease, he takes to futile bawling and sulking in his private cubbyhole. His shillyshallying in the face of a near mutiny results in the loss of an aviator and plane; another aviator, named Brice (Reed Brown Jr.), takes charge of the camp, sets grimly about digging in for another winter on a six-week food supply. But Hartley's life-long luck comes out of temporary hiding, and Brice, after forcing promises from all hands that none of the "messy" incidents shall be disclosed, cynically gives back the reins to his chastened superior in time for Broadway's anointment of ticker tape.

Three and One (adapted from the French of Denys Amiel by Lewis Galan tière and John Houseman; William Harris Jr., producer). The fact that most young women have a practical, an intellectual and a physical side to their nature is the basis for this uncertain parable which was apparently meant to be a bedroom farce but emerged as a mystery play. A matronly ballerina named Lois Valois has had three sons by assorted fathers. Arthur is a banker, all he thinks about is money; Paul is a composer, all he thinks about is music; Charles is an athlete, all he thinks about is sex. A personable young woman named Yvonne Dallier is introduced into this menage, and after an unconscionable amount of bickering and posturing, it is the goatlike Charles who succeeds in piercing her resistance.

Lilian Bond, a pneumatic British beauty newly recruited from the cinema, stretches and slinks through the part of Yvonne, and hard-working Brian Donlevy has been baking himself under sun-ray lamps for weeks to make his performance as the rutting Charles more effective. The audience left with two mysteries still unsolved: why normally acute William Harris Jr. should have found the script worthy of production; what the mysterious blonde who appeared briefly during the first act and was never mentioned by the cast, had to do with it all.