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Company's Coming! This very unfunny comedy has as engaging a comedienne (Frieda Inescort, late of Napi), as droll a farceur (Lynne Overman of Just Married) and as stupid a script as has been professionally presented for a long time. Ridden to death is the story of a poor young tennis player (Mr. Overman), who must pawn a cup he has not quite won for keeps. Included in the complications are a fake holdup, a real holdup, beer, neighbors, a bull pup, a baby. Also joining in the ruckus is a visitor from Atlanta whose attempt at the dialect of that city is an atrocity.
The Bellamy Trial. As a mystery story, this courtroom melodrama was a neat sifting and juggling of suspicious testimony, adequately convincing. As a play concocted by Author Frances Noyes Hart and Playwright Frank E. Carstarphen it is labored, lacking any of the dramatic flash which is found in the trial scene of The Silent Witness, its current cousin on Broadway.
The Bellamy and Ives families lived in the same metropolitan suburb. Mrs. Bellamy and Mr. Ives started meeting each other on the sly. Then Mrs. Bellamy was killed. Beside Mr. Bellamy and Mrs. Ives, the playwrights would have you believe that three people passed by the lonely scene of the killing, heard screams and thuds but did not trouble to investigate. The halting performance may be improved when the prosecuting attorney learns his lines.