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A Kiss of Importance should please people who like quasi-sexual French comedy performed by excellent actors. It is tastefully done and venerable Frederick Kerr, 72, father of Geoffrey Kerr (London Calling, This is New York) gives the production a certain air of dignity. Admirers of the charming elder Kerr believe that if everybody grew up to be a septuagenarian like him, the world would be a better place. Included in the cast is Basil Rathbone (The Captive, The Command to Love), a handsome ascetic mummer. Along with Mr. Kerr, Actor Rathbone appeared in The Czarina and in the cinema Lady of Scandal. Also in the play, also fresh from Hollywood, is Montagu Love.
The play has to do with a French provincial politician (Mr. Love) who hires a young blade (Mr. Rathbone) to compromise the wife (Ann Andrews) of a crotchety old royalist (Mr. Kerr). In this way the politician will be able to marry the wife without the unpleasant notoriety which would ensue should he do the compromising himself. It is inevitable that Mr. Rathbone should fall in love with Miss Andrews, that Mr. Love should become irked, expose the scheme to Mr. Kerr, who has known about it all the time. Gracefully the affair is settled, Mr. Rathbone acquiring a racehorse in addition to the comely wife.
Overture is the posthumous play of William Bolitho (Ryall), a journalist whose hunger for ideas led him to attempt expression of baffling concepts. He died last June at Avignon, France, of peritonitis following an appendectomy which a War-time injury had made risky. While a lieutenant in the British Army, he and 15 companions were buried alive in a trench after a mine explosion. His companions died, he was unconscious for several weeks, hospitalized for a year. His play is in many ways characteristic of his life: tragic, bursting with inarticulated thought. The scene is laid in post-War Germany. A revolutionary group upsets the oldtime government of a little town. There are two leaders: an aristocratic adventurer (Colin Clive of Journey's End) and a communist (laconic Pat O'Brien of The Up & Up). There is also an idealistic exhibitionist (Barbara Robbins) who is loved by them both. Most potent part of the drama comes when the Putsch fails, each revolutionist faces death in a different way. Because of its inexpert dramatization, the play can be safely recommended only to Bolithusiasts.