22 APRIL 1960, Page 24

The Mouse That Clicked

I Remember Rontano's. By Henry . Kendall. (Macdonald, 21s.)

THe commercial theatre and the fruit machine have much in common. The investment is made, the available actors, actresses, writers and theatres whizz round on their little wheels, the handle is pulled, and, if the combination is by some strange chance correct, out, in surprising quantities, comes the lolly. It is a system which gratifies the gambler and bewitches the lucky, and when writers complain that it reduces art to the level of roulette and actors sigh for security, it is easy for those staggering away with their winnings to dismiss their complaints as envy or chagrin.

Act • One, by the American playwright and director Moss Hart, is the simple story of a poor boy from the Bronx who finally hits the jackpot. It is a book of great good humour, wit and charm, and as we leave Mr. Hart with the music of box-office telephones ringing in his ears, we are certain that it couldn't possibly have hap- pened to a nicer guy. Before this we have learned how, when young and known as Mouse Hart to his employer, Moss Hart invented a phantom playwright who deeply impressed the manage- ment for whom he worked as an office boy. We discover how to judge an audience's reaction by the exact set of the shoulders of the back row of the stalls. We find out precisely how many re- writes, with his collaborator Mr. Kaufman, Mr. Hart needed before his third act finally clicked. We learn to tell how a play is received on tour by the speed at which the local hotel runs up

midnight sandwiches for the writer and producer; and we can judge just what fire-power of cough- ing from the incurably bronchial members of an audience is necessary, not merely to ruin a scene, but to murder the whole enterprise. If the audience was bored he cut, if they didn't laugh, or slumped disconsolate in their seats, he saw to it that they got a stiff shot of what they wanted. At the end up purred success and a taxi to move all his relatives into town from their homes in the Bronx. The combination was cor- rect. The money came regurgitating in a shower of nickels.

And what, perhaps you wonder, by the end of it all, is missing? A hint that Mr. Hart had some- thing to say in the theatre which had to be said whether 'they' liked it or not. A suspicion that, with all the necessary wooing of an audience, what is finally. needed in the theatre, as in every art, is a certain arrogance. A need to say, 'you may find this boring or incomprehensible, or not entirely sympathetic, and whether you listen or go home doesn't finally concern me.' To this Mr. Hart will answer that his aim in the theatre has been to give pleasure—and pleasure he has cer- tainly given. But, and the doubt continues, per- haps the greatest pleasure for an audience is to have to contend with difficulty,. and even bore- dom, to reach a recognisable truth. There may be a place in the theatre for a certain aloofness, a kind of calm which comes from not caring too much. One thinks of the amused contempt with which Chekhov greeted the suggestion that he should rewrite one of his plays—but then Chek- hov never collaborated with Mr. Kaufman, or opened in Baltimore. Still, Mr. Hart remains a born and beautiful writer. When he says of an Irish actor that his performance, on any given night, might have been presented as an appro-

priate gift to two people celebrating their wooded , wedding anniversary, my heart goes out to WI: Ever since I can remember Fred Astaire has been an unchanging archetype of cool unconce.o. With his triangular face, his trousers casually kept up by a knotted tie, his co-respondent's shoe' clicking firmly across some Riviera table top, be was, for me, in childhood, a far more potent image than Peter Pan. In my inky, myopic prep' school frame there was, I thought, an elegant hoofer struggling to get out, and I often executed a few thudding taps in the loneliness of the lavatories. Steps' in Time, his autobiography' 1.5 redolent of success and rather dull. From h13, childhood days in vaudeville, Mr. Astaire seems' apart from minor checks, to have had an almost perfect career, and the result is to give hint 3 curiously roseate view of life. 'Birmingham.' says, 'is a very nice city'; and anyone who can very find Birmingham very nice must have had it ve, good indeed. Only once, when he notices the beautiful shape his mackintosh assumes when !Is dances, does this book give a hint of an artist obsessed. Otherwise there are many photographs of that sad, bony face, poised over white tics of under a sailor's hat. There are also sentences lik 11.R.H. (The Prince of Wales) was unquestion ably the best dressed young man in the world' and .1 was missing none of it. His waist coat did' not show below the dress coat front. I liked that' Mr. Henry Kendall in his book I Remember Romano's,. makes it clear that he dislikes pro ducers who have beards and the Method. He . of the opinion that the finest modern actor no alive is Mr. Hugh Williams, and he has come tO the conclusion, apparently after many years. that producing a play is definitely creative work There are also some vivid descriptions of Mr Kendall's performances: 'I made my entrane, on a Corgi Motor Bike, dressed in the style of the late beloved Queen Mary and had a splendl reception. . . .' That's show business for Y°11`

JOHN MORI IMO'