New Plays in Manhattan

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(by James Mallahan Cain; Jack Curtis, producer). Something happened to Frank Chambers when he went into Nick Papa-dakis' roadside lunchroom and looked up [ and saw Cora standing there. Cora was Nick's wife. The Greek offered Frank a job. Frank took it and Cora, too. After that it made Cora sick to think of the Greek putting his greasy arms around her. Frank wanted to take her away from the lunchroom, but Cora had a better idea. She wanted to kill the Greek. The first time they tried to kill him they just fractured his skull, and he got over it. The second time they took him for an automobile ride, got him drunk on sweet wine, bashed his head with a monkey wrench and shoved the car over a cliff. Cora was tried for manslaughter, but a smart lawyer got her off.

Instead of being happy now that they were living together and running the dead

Greek's lunchroom, Cora and Frank let the murder make them suspicious and afraid of each other. It did not help any when Cora found she was going to have a baby. Then she got another idea. They would go down to the beach and swim out a long way. If Frank wanted to kill her, he could push her under and it would look like an accident. They went for their swim, but Frank did not push Cora under. They knew they loved each other. They decided to take a trip to make them feel better. Frank ran the car into a telephone pole. The accident cut Cora's head off. This time the district attorney slapped a murder charge on Frank. They hanged Frank.

James Cain's monosyllabic minor masterpiece of love and violence in the Los Angeles district was a spectacular best seller two years ago. As abbreviated and re-edited for the stage, The Postman Always Rings Twice seems a more sober product, possibly because oldtime Cinemactor Richard Barthelmess looks, talks and acts too much like Rear Admiral Richard Evelyn Byrd to impersonate fully the formidable Frank Chambers of the novel.* That does not prevent The Postman Always Rings Twice from being an exciting chronicle for those who have not read the book. As Nick the Greek, Joseph Greenwald (Abie's Irish Rose] is wonderfully naïve. As Cora, Mary Philips turns in another of her fine mature performances. Jo Mielziner has designed a pair of realistic automobile crash scenes which should supplement —And Sudden Death as a deterrent to reckless driving.

Dear Old Darling (written & produced by George Michael Cohan), written, according to the author, in the interlude following the World Series, is the 52nd play to bear the Cohan name. "There are 31 others," points out a program note, "for which he never took credit." Dear Old Darling is surely not the most original of the 83, but no one need be ashamed to take credit for it. Sensitive critics will savor its vintage rather than sneeze at its fustiness.