The Theater: New Play in Manhattan, Dec. 1, 1941

Junior Miss (adapted from Sally Benson's stories by Jerome Chodorov & Joseph Fields; produced by Max Gordon). Last season Adapters Chodorov & Fields turned Ruth McKenney's My Sister Eileen stories into a gay comedy about youth which is still running on Broadway. Last week they had turned Sally Benson's Junior Miss stories into a gay comedy about adolescence which should still be on Broadway a year from now. For its characters are kids at once harum-scarum and "nice," and it mirrors the kind of middle-class family life which huge audiences chuckle at.

In the center of the picture is chubby, bright-eyed, 13-year-old Judy Graves, flanked by her condescending sub-deb sister Lois, and her floppy, frog-voiced friend Fuffy Adams. To Lois life merely means Boys in all shapes and sizes; to Judy and Fuffy it means squeals and nudges, their first high-heeled shoes, their first colored nail polish, food every hour, and thinking about their parents in terms of Tyrone Power and Irene Dunne. So long as it sticks to a world in which Christmas is Heaven, 35 seems old age, and giggles serve as repartee, Junior Miss is gay, bright, fairly authentic.

Unfortunately the adapters drag in a plot which, besides being hokum, is a nuisance: it clutters up the play with a lot of grownups.

Making her first Broadway appearance, 16-year-old Patricia Peardon tears into the role of Judy with engaging gusto. But as Fuffy, Lenore Lonergan (the brat in The Philadelphia Story) runs away with every scene she plays in.