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She plays Simone, a divorcee. Tony Lagorce (Stanley Logan) handsome, sexy, once Simone's husband, continues to rule her passions with arrogant impudence. She tries to escape from his spell, by fleeing to a gambling resort in the Pyrenees. Tony swaggers into sight. In a moment of rebellion against herself, she hires a penniless, unfavored young lover to act as her private secretary, his specific duty being to thwart by any means in his power her surrender to Tony. This Andre Sallicel (Leslie Howard) undertakes to do. The rest consists of clever situations, Andre ambles through the doorway or appears pajama-clad in the bedroom, whenever the fascinating Tony stands within one insolent stride of triumph. The audience, unless it deliberately inquired of it self, rarely realized that Leslie Howard was acting Andre Sallicel.
In the French, Simone was one time, mistress of Tony, not one time wife. The Frohman office, however, is controlled by Famous Players-Lasky. It was through their influence that The Captive was taken off at the height of its success, lest its "indecency" reflect upon cinema. Likewise, Her Cardboard Lover was expurgated. The play remains for all that a smart bit. But it is noteworthy that the cinema standard is settling slowly, with anaesthetic effect up on the spoken drama which it owns. The ultimate result must be that cinema-controlled plays will sink to the innocuous level where they con vey no ideas pungent enough to offend the greater cinema masses. Lucky. The New Amsterdam is, by tradition, the house for greater Dillingham displays. Sunny ran here for several years in a gorgeous pageant of dance and song with Marilyn Miller. The new show, Lucky runs up a chroma tic scale of splendors to even greater heights of extravagance, splashing the theatre with explosions of scenic brilliance. Jerome Kern's music pleases. A picturesque scenario of pearl-treasure hunt in Ceylon affords opportunity to introduce a chorus of Malay girls. But the most popular attraction is Paul Whiteman's band, which, on appearing about eleven o'clock from a night-club across the street, brought a slightly splendor sated audience again to attention. Mary Eaton, the star, blonde, unruffled, agreeable, has no magic to make this opulence personally charming. Yet the show will probably dazzle for a long time.
The Spider. The purpose of a "mystery" melodrama is to crowd another excitement into life. Five of them are performing this grateful service for jaded Broadway: Wooden Kimono, Set A Thief, Fog, The Mystery Ship, The Spider. The Spider is the newest, the best.