Reflected Glory (by George Kelly; Lee Shubert, Homer Curran, producers) exhibits temperamental Actress Tallulah Bankhead cast as a temperamental actress, stalking about on her heels, slapping the furniture to accentuate her outbursts, lowering her voice to a sepulchral baritone, leaning backward at an angle of 30° while combing her hair, ordering a midnight supper of two pork chops, Julienne potatoes, buttermilk, salted peanuts. Written seven years ago by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Craig's Wife and The Show-Off, Reflected Glory at least has the distinction of being Tallulah Bankhead's most creditable vehicle since her repatriation five years ago.
On her way to the top, Muriel Flood (Miss Bankhead) is alternately berated and praised by her hard-boiled and single-minded manager (Clay Clement), is tirelessly pursued by a stodgy suitor from her home town. The sympathy with which she receives his proposals of marriage is discouraged by the manager, by the acrid philosophizing of a fellow trouper (Ann Andrews) and the appearance of a more appealing admirer (Phillip Reed). Although she achieves success in Manhattan, she seems perfectly willing to give up her career to marry this charmer until he is exposed as an actress-chasing cad with a concealed wife & child. When the home-town suitor reappears, Muriel Flood greets him with great enthusiasm, but by this time he has a wife of his own, too. The manager consoles her by reading a review which credits her with "the most illuminated acting since Sarah Bernhardt."
So Proudly We Hail (by Joseph M. Viertel Shapiro; James R. Ullman, producer). Author Shapiro, 21, is the son of the proprietor of the French Casino, a Manhattan hotspot. Young Mr. Shapiro attended Staunton Military Academy in Virginia for four years with a brilliant record, was graduated from Harvard last June magna cum laude. So Proudly We Hail, Mr. Shapiro's first attempt at professional playwriting, lacks craftsmanship, balance and subtlety. As a propaganda piece, however, it is as brutally effective as a meat-ax, contains enough obviously first-hand documentation, along with its exaggerations, to deter hundreds of parents from sending their sons to schools which they may suspect of resembling Stone Ridge Military Academy ("You Give Us The Boy, We Return You The Man").
To Stone Ridge goes a sensitive, friendly and musically inclined youth named Jim Thornton (Richard Cromwell). After some months, tired of parades, catchwords, "discipline" and adolescent savagery, he dons civilian clothes, tries to leave, is slapped in the face by the commandant of cadets, discovers that he is a prisoner. While he is serving 30 days in the guardhouse, one of his roommates, whose notions of duty prevent him from reporting a cold to the infirmary, dies of pneumonia. In Thornton's hearing the conscientious medical officer tells the commandant that the school ought to be prosecuted. The commandant hints that if Thornton ignores this incident, he will be made a sergeant next year.