The Theater: New Play in Manhattan, May 2, 1949

Magnolia Alley (by George Batson; produced by Lester Cutler) was already, at week's end, part of Memory Lane. It set out to picture the life of a shabby-ungenteel rooming house in a Southern town. The characters included a landlady with a past and a thirst (Jessie Royce Landis); her daughter, a boxer's wife and almost anybody's woman; her adopted daughter, a rather noisily religious girl; her chief roomer, a Magnolia Streetwalker; and enough men to illustrate the women's ways. Done right, it might have been enjoyably raffish. Since Playwright Batson's script was as tasteless and untidy as his people's lives,...

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