Theatre: New Plays in Manhattan: Feb. 23, 1931

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America's Sweetheart is notable if only for its refreshing little plot, which consistently refuses to run the usual course of musicomedies. The standard Act I finale finds the Boy and the Girl bitterly disappointed through some unfortunate misunderstanding, whereupon one or the other inevitably sings a snatch of the show's torch song and wanders hopelessly away. In America's Sweetheart, however, when Jack Whiting sees that his girl friend (Harriette Lake) is about to throw him over for a big cinemagnate, he breaks into a sullen soft-shoe dance with Gus Shy, the comic, and then irritably pushes Miss Lake into a fountain.

Another triumph for the peerless team of Fields, Rodgers & Hart, the plot is in the Once in a Lifetime manner, a succession of uncharitable laughs at the expense of Hollywood. Miss Lake and Mr. Whiting trek out from St. Paul to make good in the movies. Miss Lake—a lovely synthesis, one part Ginger Rogers, one part Ethel Merman—makes good first. Her fame permeates even the fastness of the Tennessee mountains, for in Scene 4 three backwoods girls (the talented, reedy-voiced Forman sisters) are aware that:

America has a sweetheart, America has a queen.

She has a chauffeur, An Argentine loafer.

She rules the silver screen.

As time wears on, however, Miss Lake finds that her fame is eclipsed by Mr. Whiting in the new talkies, a field of endeavor which a slight lisp makes impossible for her.

There is no outstanding comedy element in America's Sweetheart, although Gus Shy manages to be moderately amusing. But continual merriment arises from the excellent book Mr. Fields has provided. At one point a regiment of stately ladies in ermine appears. Pretty heads tossed back, they parade gracefully to the footlights, begin a song with: "We all got stinking last night."

Packed like honey in a hive are the sweet, nostalgic tunes of Messrs. Rodgers & Hart. Made to order for the grey tea-dance hour are: "I've Got $5" and "We'll Be The Same." All in all, America's Sweetheart is an uncommonly good musical show.

The collaboration of Composer Richard Rodgers, and Lyricist Lorenz Hart began in 1919 when they wrote the Columbia University 'varsity show directed and staged by Herbert Fields. The next year, when Mr. Rodgers was 17, they presented The Poor Little Ritz Girl, under the direction of Producer Lewis Marice "Lew" Fields, father of Librettist Herbert Fields. "Manhattan" and "Sentimental Me," two tuneful numbers in the Garrick Gaieties of 1925, made them. Since then the team, joined by the younger Fields, has turned out some of Broadway's freshest musicomedies: Dearest Enemy, The Girl Friend, Peggy Ann.