Basil Rathbone: Jane

A comedy in three acts by S.N. Behrman, suggested by an original story by Somerset Maugham. Opened at the Coronet Theatre, New York City, February 1, 1952, and ran through April 26 (100 performances). Produced by the Theatre Guild, Inc., under the supervision of Theresa Helburn and Lawrence Langner. Directed by Cyril Ritchard and Associate Director Armina Marshall. Company Manager, Peter Davis; Stage Manager, George Greenberg; Asst. Stage Manager, Al Collins; Master Electrician, Chris Bradley; Wardrobe Mistress, Hallye Clogg.

Setting and costumes designed by Elfi von Kantzow. Miss Best's gowns by Valentina. Miss Browne's gowns by Bergdorf-Goodman. Miss Corri's gowns by Claire McCardell. Miss Best's coiffure by Ronald De Mann. Scenery built and painted by Cherokee Construction Company. English furniture and silver by Philip Colleck of London. Miss Best's second act rhinestone jewelry by Mazer Bros., Inc. Miss Browne's jewelry by Milton E. Brown & Co. Luggage by Wings Luggage Co. Drapery fabric by Jofa, Inc. Park and Tilford products used. Still photos by Vandamm Studio.

Based on a short story by W. Somerset Maugham, the comedy Jane was first written in 1946, and performed in London in 1947. It was not performed on Broadway until 1952. Basil Rathbone's character, William Tower, is a writer, and is based on W. Somerset Maugham. In fact, the stage directions state: "The actor who plays William Tower would do well to study the portraits and read the works of W. Somerset Maugham. . . . Tower wears a monocle on a broad black ribbon with which he habitually fixes people." [from The Best Plays of 1951-52, ed. by Burns Mantle (Dodd, Mead and Co., 1952), p. 210]

In Act I we learn that William Tower's daughter Ann and her boyfriend Peter, a poet, are in love. Their relationship faces two challenges, however: 1) Ann's mother can't stand Peter, and she hopes that her ex-husband Willie can do something to break up Ann and Peter; and 2) Peter has married a girl in order for her to obtain a passport. She was being persecuted because of her father's political opinions, and is now in a concentration camp.

Mrs. Tower is horrified to learn that her middle-aged sister-in-law Jane Fowler will arrive shortly. Jane, the widow of Mrs. Tower's brother, appears old and frumpy, an actual "plain Jane." Mrs. Tower declares, "She looks twenty years older than I do and she's perfectly capable of telling anyone she meets that we were at school together. When she comes to London it never occurs to her to stay anywhere but here—she thinks it would hurt my feelings."

Also visiting are Willie Tower, who has just returned from a trip to Africa, and Lord Frobisher, a friend and chain-paper publisher. Jane gets along well with Willie. She surprises everyone by announcing that she is going to get married. Her intended (Gilbert Dabney) is about 30 years old, so everyone assumes that he is marrying Jane for her money.

Act II takes place six months later. Peter has had a book of poems published, so he is enjoying some success as a writer. Jane, who had been dowdy and dull, is now the reigning social success of London. She describes her young husband Gilbert as "old-fashioned."

Jane appeals to Lord Frobisher to use his influence to get Peter's wife out of the prison camp. Jane offers to pay the costs, if only Frobisher can make the arrangements. Then Peter and his wife can get a divorce, and Peter will be free to marry Ann Tower.

When Gilbert hears about Jane's meddling in Peter's business, he is angry with her. He decides to take Mrs. Tower to the opera instead of Jane. Willie Tower invites Jane and Frobisher to dinner.

When the curtain rises for Act III, it is ten days later. Tower speaks to Jane, expressing concern for Ann and Peter. Jane says she plans to adopt Peter's wife, who is out of prison and on her way to England. Gilbert responds to this news by saying, "This time Jane has gone too far." After confronting Jane, Gilbert leaves her.

Frobisher comes in just as Gilbert is leaving, and Tower explains what happened. "Serves her right," remarks Frobisher. Tower observes that Frobisher is so rude to Jane that he must be very taken with her. Tower appalls Frobisher by suggesting that he might enjoy being married to Jane. "Last man on earth for anyone to marry," says Frobisher. Tower states that he'd be a better husband than Frobisher, and the two men continue to banter about who should marry Jane.

The cast, which included Irene Browne from the London cast, began rehearsals in mid-December 1951.

Howard St. John and Edna Best had participated in a tryout of the play at the Westport Country Playhouse (Westport, Connecticut) the previous July. At that time the play was called "The Foreign Language."

In early 1952, Jane had pre-Broadway tryouts at the Playhouse in Wilmington, Delaware (January 10) and at the Walnut St. Theatre in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (January 14-26). Earnings the first week in Philadelphia were only fair, and they did not pick up the second week. As a result, management decided to hold the show in Philadelphia for three extra days instead of moving to Hartford as planned. The three extra performances were January 28, 29, and 30.

When Jane opened on Broadway February 1, 1952, one critic then wrote: ''High comedy has almost vanished from the American theater, which for the past few seasons has been so busy with problems and depressing people that it has almost forgotten how to induce laughter.'' —from the New York Times, June 14, 1987

The character of William Tower, was fashioned after W. Somerset Maugham, the author of the short story from which the play was adapted. Tower's ex-wife, Millicent, was patterned after Maugham's wife, Syrie. The character of Allan Frobisher also had a real-life counterpart: Canadian newspaper tycoon Lord Beaverbrook.

Dramatist S. N. Behrman, one of the Theatre Guild's foremost writers, was frequently referred to as an American Noel Coward. In addition to Jane, he wrote Biography, No Time for Comedy and The Second Man.

Basil Rathbone had previously acted with Edna Best in the play Melo, which was performed on Broadway in 1931, and in a brief revival of The Heiress, performed from February 8-19, 1950 (16 performances). In radio, Edna Best directed some of the Sherlock Holmes episodes that starred Basil Rathbone. She also staged Noel Coward's "Tonight at 8:30," a cycle of nine short plays that were performed at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood in August 1940. Basil appeared in The Astonished Heart, one of those short plays in the cycle.

The only time Basil Rathbone acted with Howard St. John, Philip Friend, and the rest of the cast was on the stage in this production of Jane.

Behrman's "Jane" Sparkles Wit, But Somewhere a Play is Missing

No playwright around these days can handle a comedy of manners better than S.N. Behrman, and it is a treat again to listen to a polished, witty dialog. He has put a lot of it into his comedy Jane." Conversationally, it sparkles a great deal of the time. But unfortunately its premise is frail and rather silly, and gets nowhere beyond engendering a certain genial warmth—certainly not enough to put the heat on the Coronet's box office for any protracted period.

Behrman's plot is based on a story of Somerset Maugham's about a middle-aged ugly duckling who belatedly takes on swan plumage. In this case, she is an elderly provincial widow who descends on a Mayfair menage and turns it end-over-end via sheer charm. She marries a lad half her age, lets him desert her, and angles herself into a third set of wedding bells with a tycoon as well known for his bedroom antics as for his ability as a publisher. Along the way, she serenely arranges the marital happiness of a niece, utterly confounds a meanish sister-in-law, and almost snares a cynical brother-in-law. All of which is accomplished in the most naively ingenious manner, even if it is quaintly unbelievable. It is, however, played for the most part on a wonderfully brittle, high-comedy plane by its principals.

Edna Best creates a delightful portrait of the guilefully guileless lady who charms by merely telling the truth. She is particularly adept at this type of comedy. Adept, also, is her co-star, Basil Rathbone. As a sort of bystander to the story, in which he gets involved in spite of himself, Rathbone plays one of Maugham's typical suave, cynical writing men.

You do not often meet a man with such a singularly continuous flow of wit, but Behrman has given him amusing things to say, and he gets all the best out of them. But it is Howard St. John's teaming with Miss Best which gives the play its best moments. The former's growing frustration as a self-confessed roue, as he falls under the lady's spell, are real high spots in an otherwise conversational evening.

Irene Browne contributes excellently as a Mayfair divorcee with all the silly conceits and deceits of her class, and Philip Friend plays the selfish young husband who walks out on Jane with a fine relish. Adrienne Corri and William Whitman pair adequately in the secondary love interests which is the basis of the frail plot.

Having knowing players to work with, plus a high-comedy perception of his own, Cyril Ritchard has staged these drawing-room doings effectively, although there are considerable stretches of chit-chat that get his inventiveness down. The Theater Guild has given "Jane" a plush production, with a high-power Hyde Park drawing-room background by Elfi von Kantzow who is also responsible for costumes, except those supplied for Miss Best's metamorphosis by Valentina. It is too bad that there is not a better play to go with it all.

Bob Francis

—Billboard, February 9, 1952

"Jane ... is a wise or, at least, very clever comedy, weak during the first half of the second act but decidedly a relief from humdrum writing. Whether it could have any effect with a cast that has no actors comparable to Edna Best, Basil Rathbone, Howard St. John, and Irene Browne is another matter." —John Gassner, "Broadway in Review," Educational Theatre Journal, May 1952

"Edna Best is brilliant in the title role, making thoroughly plausible the great change in the character that occurs between the first and second act. Basil Rathbone gives a suave, polished reading of the role of William Tower, the cynical author." —Variety, January 16, 1952

QUERY: WHAT MAKES COMEDY HIGH?
By S. N. BEHRMAN
Dramatist, Scenarist, Biographer

I know that the press agent for my new play at the Coronet Theatre will be unhappy if I don't mention "Jane," and it is a primary function of the playwright to keep the press agent in amiable spirits. Maugham's short story, on which the play is based, tells about an elderly frump from Liverpool who marries a very young and very attractive man. Miss Theresa Helburn of the Theatre Guild wished me to adapt it. Mr. Maugham, who is one of the canniest of men, has sold the film rights to everything he has ever written—he has recently even been selling the rights to his fascinating personality; but he never sold the film rights to "Jane," although it is over thirty years old; because he felt that it would one day make a play.

Difficult Task

Although he is a brilliant playwright, he did not want to dramatize it himself because he has long since quit the theatre, which is perhaps an even profounder demonstration of his canniness. It looked to me like an attractive job but it was very hard to do. The theatre is the most naked of mediums; it is a two-and-a-half-hour close-up, and questions which Maugham never had to answer—nor even to raise—in the compass of a short story, pop up uncomfortably when you come to write a play. Why does a sensible woman like Jane marry a man so much younger? Maugham describes her as witty and as making a sensation by always telling the truth. Nice work if you can get it!

Also, and this is the nub, instead of the young man's eventually leaving Jane, as everyone predicts, Jane leaves the young man. This was a puzzler. Why? I gave this as much thought as Newton and Satan gave the apple—with somewhat less epochal results. One line gave the play to me and the answer. When Gilbert asks Jane why she is leaving him, she says: "Because you are too old for me!" This line was, originally, the curtain of Act Two, the climax of the play. In the prolonged neurasthenic hypochondria which constitutes a try-out tour, I allowed this line to be shifted to Act Three. The point I wanted to make in the play is that youth is a question of vitality, generosity, warmth and general sympathy in point of view. A stuffed shirt may be old at 20. Jane is alive and vital and will be young at 80.

—The New York Times, March 30, 1952

"While some of the lines in "Jane" are funny and some are not, they all have the same sort of surface quality; all of them are delivered—by the members of an efficient cast, who are not paid to scratch beneath this surface—as though they were bon mots; and the audience laughs reflexively, though cordially, at each invitation. ... There are two fine performances, by Edna Best and Howard St. John, and two others, by Basil Rathbone and Irene Browne, that are faintly ridiculous, but amusing." —John Lardner, The New Yorker, February 9, 1952

"This is an idle romp in an English drawing room in 1938, when the world was just getting ready to explode. Standards of responsible behavior are hinted at occasionally. ... The character Mr. Behrman is fondest of is a fiction and comedy writer called 'Willie' who stands just outside the action, observing it with mischievous relish. Rich, elegant, sagacious, impeccable in his choice of words, he represents W. Somerset Maugham, master of the genre. When Jane was produced in London Mr. Maugham may have been astonished to find himself moving through the ballet pattern of one of his own stories, cautiously dissociating himself form the social dilemmas it chronicles. Since Mr. Behrman's talents as prose writer are equivalent to Mr. Maugham's, there is no sycophancy in the portrait. On the contrary, there is some shrewd criticism and some genial satire of Mr. Maugham's disdainful point of view. But it is a portrait written with respect and understanding as well as humor and it emerges as the most winning character in the play. Mr. Rathbone is ideal in the part. He is crisp, immaculate and good humored, and he speaks some elaborately written lines with wry punctilio." —Brooks Atkinson, The New York Times, February 10, 1952

Plays on Broadway

Jane

"Jane" is a mass of contradictions. It has a droll premise, an awful lot of talk and considerable wit, but isn't much of a play. It's expertly played and deftly staged, but it frequently seems pretty hollow. Its characters appear to be rather shallow, but they're mostly inclined to be likeable at heart. The show itself should have a moderately good run, but isn't likely to have mass popularity.

In style and treatment, "Jane" is characteristic of its authorship. It was dramatized by S. N. Behrman ("suggested by," the program expresses it) from a story of W. Somerset Maugham, and is a suave, wise, amusing but strangely synthetic yarn that never quite seems to achieve concrete form or reality. Bu artful handling makes it palatable, if not superlative entertainment.

The story, somehow not entirely credible, is about a dowdy, middle-aged Liverpool widow who marries a penniless young architect, blossoms out in glad rags and becomes the rage of London smart set on the novelty of her directness instead of the usual small talk. After that diverting start, however, "Jane" becomes somewhat murky in plot and characterization, and is less satisfying theatre.

As title actress and top star, Edna Best gives a superb comedy performance that is primarily responsible for saving the show. Her bland, deceptively mild style of comedy playing is hilarious and, teamed with the crisp manner of Basil Rathbone, her co-star, or the emphatic impact of Howard St. John, is irresistible. Rathbone gives definition to the role of a sardonic foreign correspondent-novelist-playwright (said to be at least a semi-portrait of Maugham), while St. John is funny if not too convincingly self-satisfied or arrogant as a self-indulgent newspaper magnate.

Irene Browne presents a shrewdly comic portrait of a fashionable feline divorcee and Philip Friend gives a genuinely skillful performance in the difficult part of Jane's "young man." Among the non-featured parts, Adrienne Corri is believable as a rather stereotype heroine, William Whitman is plausible as her impractical fiance, and Al Collins and Sarah Marshall (the latter the daughter of Miss Best and ex-husband Herbert Marshall) are acceptable in bit assignments.

Cyril Ritchard's staging is perceptive and has an infectious flavor. The Elfi von Kantzow drawing room setting has the traditional brightness for comedy, but doesn't look like the sort of interior any normal playgoer is ever apt to see outside a theatre. Valentina's gowns for Miss Best are scrumptious.

Hobe.

—Variety, February 6, 1952

"A cast of experts in smart comedy make the most of every twist and sally with Basil Rathbone, as a replica of Mr. Maugham, alerted to inject the expected bit of cynicism." —Catholic World, March 1952

The theater where the play Jane was performed opened as the Forrest Theatre in 1925. Located at 230 West 49th Street, it was renamed the Coronet Theater in 1945, and the Eugene O'Neill Theater in 1959.