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You will not be very much surprised by Playwright Davis' solution of the Langdons' situation, but Actress Wood's full-blown charm, tinged with a happy trace of quiet amusement at the part she is playing, should please. Hugh O'Connell, the droll one who cracked Indian nuts throughout Once in a Lifetime, demonstrates first-rate ability in a part more serious for him than usual. Forsaking All Others (by Edward Roberts & Frank Cavett; Arch Selwyn, producer). It took four directors, a reformed magician and a heavy-lidded lady who is a Congressman's daughter and a Senator's niece to get this lush comedy in production.
Like Peggy Wood, svelte, sexy Tallulah Bankhead has not been seen on her native boards for some years, although her bony, faintly reptilian face has brooded through several recent Hollywood films. In Forsaking All Others, Miss Bankhead of Alabama is called upon to play the part of a young woman who is about to be married to her childhood sweetheart. Waiting nervously in an anteroom of the church, the bride-to-be exclaims that "she would really rather live in sin'' than go through with the marriage. Unexpectedly she is relieved of the necessity. Her groom jilts her for a dark, rapacious beauty he has met abroad. "Well," sardonically observes Actress Bankhead, "anyhow, Jesus loves me." The indecisive groom forsakes his new wife for his old girl, goes to Mexico with one of his friends (Fred Keating, who used to make birdcages disappear and eat needles while conversing glibly) to get a quick divorce. But this time Actress Bankhead changes her mind, a bit of luck for Magician Keating.
Forsaking All Others has a set, a combination of cosiness and opulence, executed by Donald Oenslager, which may be recorded as the best-looking stage drawing room on Broadway. Miss Bankhead's lazy walk, assured head-tossings and general air of supersophistication are interesting: one understands why London "gallery girls" formed Tallulah Bankhead clubs. Her performance is as smooth and exciting as a planter's punch. You will probably not be able to recall what it was that she and clever Fred Keating said that made you chuckle, but you will remember chuckling.
Run, Little Chillun! (by Hall Johnson; Robert Rockmore, producer). Jim, son and assistant preacher to Pastor Jones of Hope Baptist Church (colored), is drawn from his good wife Ella by the flashing eyes of Sulamai, a loose-hipped young woman from Toomer's Bottom, across the tracks. With Sulamai he attends a meeting of the New Day Pilgrims, a strange sect who worship the moon out in the cypress swamps with four-part harmony and orgiastic dancing. Sulamai seems to have an irresistible appeal for the minor clergy. Writhing in ecstasy among the half-naked New Day Pilgrims, she also distracts the heathen big black Brother Moses from pure contemplation of the moon. Back in Hope Baptist Church, Pastor Jones is conducting a six-day camp meeting to bring his straying lamb back to the fold. Jim sees the error of his ways, returns to Ella. The vicious Sulamai is killed by a bolt of lightning at the church door.