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, it was just unpleasantly dull.