The Theater: New Play in Manhattan, May 5, 1941

The Beautiful People (written and produced by William Saroyan). Playwright Saroyan is still selling his big but ancient idea—that living can be pretty fine if people can relax and savor it. The trouble is that in his new play the Theater's most pronounced overdose of vitamin "I" leadens, rather than lightens, his fantasy with the well-known Saroyan whimsey.

The Beautiful People has a boozy, poetical father (Curtis Cooksey) living with an adolescent son and daughter in a decaying mansion on a San Francisco hill. They are supported by a monthly pension check mistakenly...

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