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than a Broadway star.
28 RIDING THE BROADWAY-HOLLYWOOD LOCAL
Shortly after leaving the Teck Players, Rosalind was cast in Talent, a
new play by Rachel Crothers, America s best-known and most prolific
female playwright before Lillian Hellman arrived on the scene. Since
Crothers s last three plays had been hits Let Us Be Gay (1929), As Husbands
Go (1931), and When Ladies Meet (1932) Rosalind assumed Talent would be,
too. At least it should run for more than a week. The choice of theater also
augured well: the Royale (renamed the Jacobs in 2005) on West Forty-fifth
Street, where Crothers s last play, When Ladies Meet, enjoyed a run of 173
performances. Nineteen thirty-three was a banner year for Crothers. As
Husbands Go returned to Broadway in January 1933. Two months after When
Ladies Meet closed in New York on 4 March, the Chicago company went into
the Royale on 15 May, but was forced to end its run after 18 performances
because of a union dispute. Even so, the Royale seemed the right venue for
another Crothers success.
Talent, which tried out at the Cape Playhouse in Massachusetts in early
September, was scheduled to open at the Royale on 2 January 1934, with
Mady Christians and Brian Donlevy in the lead roles. Rosalind was cast
in the supporting role of Mazie Myrtle. At first the mood was upbeat. By
18 December the programs had been printed. The 31 December New York
Herald Tribune carried Al Hirschfeld s caricature of the entire cast, including
Rosalind. When previews began a week before the opening, Christians came
down with acute laryngitis, missing several performances. Finally, a decision
was made to cancel the opening, and a notice to that effect appeared in the
Herald Tribune on 1 January. There was no attempt to mount another pro-
duction, and the play is not even mentioned in Lois C. Gottlieb s Rachel Crothers
[Twayne: Boston, 1979], the standard book on the playwright.
If Broadway was not beckoning, the subway circuit was. At least there
Rosalind could play leads and not have to worry about a show closing before
it even opened. The term  subway circuit was a misnomer. Originally, it
referred to plays that toured the other boroughs of New York or nearby cities
in New Jersey, such as Newark, that were accessible by subway or bus. Soon,
the subway circuit extended as far south as Philadelphia and Washington,
RIDING THE BROADWAY-HOLLYWOOD LOCAL 29
D.C., and as far east as Hartford, Connecticut. In 1934, Rosalind was on the
Newark spur of the circuit, alternating between Frank Vosper s Murder on
the Second Floor (1929) and S. N. Behrman s brilliant comedy of manners, The
Second Man (1927). In the former, her costar was Cesar Romero, who, like
Rosalind, would soon be heading to Hollywood. The play is remembered for
Laurence Olivier s New York debut, although it barely lasted six weeks.
Romero played Olivier s role Hugh Bromilow, a neophyte dramatist strug-
gling to write a typical British whodunit. Since there was only one significant
female role in Murder, Rosalind was probably Sylvia Armitage, who chal-
lenges Bromilow to restrict the setting of his play to the boardinghouse
where he lives (and which her mother owns), the characters to the resi-
dents, and the plot to a murder, with everyone a suspect. In the denoue-
ment, the audience discovers that Bromilow succeeded in writing his
whodunit, which is the play they have just seen.
However, it was not Murder on the Second Floor but The Second Man
(1927) that brought Rosalind to Hollywood. In The Second Man, her co-star
was Bert Lytell, a fairly successful actor during the silent era, with consid-
erable stage experience as well. Lytell and Rosalind were cast in roles
created by Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne: Lytell as Clark Storey, an irrev-
erently witty writer of unlimited charm, and Rosalind as Mrs. Kendall
Frayne, a rich widow who is captivated by him, although she knows he
is as interested in her money as he is in her. Storey, however, finds Monica
Grey more appealing; Monica, however, is as  poor as a church mouse
and courted by Austin Lowe, a millionaire scientist. The second act cli-
maxes with Monica s disclosure that she is pregnant with Storey s child;
although she later denies it, Kendall is not convinced. No doubt some
members of the audience would have preferred that Storey  do the right [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]