The Theatre: New Plays in Manhattan: Feb. 12, 1934

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All the King's Horses (book & lyrics by Frederick Herendeen; music by Edward A. Horan; Harry L. Cort and Charles H. Abramson, producers). For this season's few musical shows in Manhattan† this studiously unoriginal little opus afforded company rather than competition. The story is labeled: "A Royal Escapade in a Little European Kingdom. . . . Let Us Call It Langenstein." The music is cacophonous except for "I Found a Song" which decorative Nancy McCord and spry little Guy Robertson spend most of their time singing. For humor Librettist Herendeen has relied heavily on the outlandish sound of U. S. slang in dreamy old Langenstein.

A Hat, a Coat, a Glove (by William Speyer, adapted by William A. Drake; Crosby Gaige and D. K. Weiskopf, producers). "Tell Mr. Cravath to be there by one," says Lawyer Robert Mitchell (A. E. Matthews) to his secretary in this play. This cool second-act instruction does not mean that famed Paul D. Cravath is about to be seen in A Hat, a Coat, a Glove. It merely shows that Mr. Mitchell has a 16-cylinder legal mind, with big names in his address book. For such a bland, patrician barrister, he is in a most astonishing predicament. His wife (Nedda Harrigan) has left him to sin with a young illustrator (Lester Vail). The illustrator has fished a drowning prostitute out of the East River, rushed off to ask Mrs. Mitchell what to do about her. Lawyer Mitchell has chosen this awkward first act moment to call upon the illustrator and settle the score with him. He finds the prostitute there alone, accidentally shoots her dead. When the illustrator is accused of murder, Mrs. Mitchell is impudent enough to ask her husband to defend him. Lawyer Mitchell is weighing the advantages of doing so when he orders his secretary to arrange his lunch appointment.

A meal with the senior partner of Cravath, de Gersdorff, Swaine & Wood would doubtless have made a much better third act than the one offered in A Hat, a Coat, a Glove. It is a gloomy and exceed ingly unreal courtroom scene in which A. E. Matthews, the suavest English actor on the U. S. stage, bites his nails politely while he refutes a rumbling district attorney. It ends with Lawyer Mitchell telling his wife to blow her nose. She indicates that she loves him still by borrowing his handkerchief.