Sweet Mystery of Life (by Richard Maibaum. Michael Wallach & George Haight; Herman Shumlin, producer). Written with one eye on Broadway's hilarious Three Men on a Horse and the other on Hollywood, this farce exhibits the psychological rejuvenation of a grouchy department store tycoon (Gene Lockhart) who fancies himself ready to die. Three scheming vice presidents plan to insure his life, then talk him into his grave. Hastily summoned is a moony ager.t (Hobart Cavanaugh) of Good Life Insurance Co. who observes that "Life Insurance is Immortality." finds himself the dazed recipient of commissions on a $5,000,000 policy. He makes friends with the insured, teaches him handball and health rules, brings him back from Bermuda bursting with bounce and sparkle. The schemers call in a hussy whose amorous ministrations they hope will hasten their employer's collapse. Thence the comedy builds up to an unerring anticlimax. The employer marries the hussy.
Overdone in spots and half-baked in others. Sweet Mystery of Life proves chunky, pug-nosed Gene Lockhart (Ah, Wilderness!) a comedian who can make much out of little. One member of the cast who seems to enjoy himself is bulky Broderick Crawford, son of owl-eyed Comedienne Helen Broderick.
Achilles Had a Heel (by Martin Flavin: Walter Hampden, producer) is a distressing piece of mumbo-jumbo showing Tragedian Hampden as a Negro elephant-keeper in a zoo. Mr. Hampden and the invisible elephant love each other for being big. strong, noble. When a high-yellow wench, urged on by a jealous monkey-keeper, saps Mr. Hampden's integrity, the elephant, outraged, knocks his friend down with a blast of dusty air. The monkey-keeper gets the elephant job. makes a mistake, is promptly killed.
Mr. Hampden does his level best with this nonsense, fails to dispel an impression that he appears in it because he lost a sporting election bet.
Jubilee (words & music by Moss Hart & Cole Porter; Sam Harris & Max Gordon, producers) was facetiously described by its creators during rehearsals as a cross between The Merry Widow and As Thousands Cheer. In common with the former, it is laid in a fabulous kingdom found only in operetta. But in comparison with the latter, about the best that can be said is that the same man wrote both books. Jubilee chiefly satisfies the eye. In design and color, the costumery by Irene Sharaff & Connie Depinna probably surpasses anything so far seen on Broadway. But when Jubilee tries to please the ear, and especially when it tries to tickle the funnybone, it is less successful.
In the kingdom of Hart & Porter, the King (Melville Cooper) yearns not for feats of statecraft but to be able to perform tricks of magic. The Queen (Mary Boland) yearns for the handsome biceps of Charles Rausmiller, the cinema's Mowgli. The Prince and Princess yearn respectively for a night-club dancer and an itinerant playwright. On the eve of the King's jubilee, the pressure of boredom sends them all off to satisfy their various yearnings.