foolish types.

Merton of the Movies

Franklin Adams provided the impetus for another Connelly-Kaufman collaboration when he recommended in his column of February 3, 1922, Merton of the Movies, a novel by Harry Leon Wilson. The producer George C. Tyler then suggested it to the team, and the play opened November 13, 1922. Wilson’s novel is a biting attack on the hypocrisy and meretriciousness of Hollywood and its reflection of the pervasive lack of culture in the United States; Connelly and Kaufman viewed Hollywood with an air of such superior amusement that they could not feel themselves threatened enough to knot the lash of their satire any more than they had with Dulcy. Instead, they made the play a story of one man realizing his dream to be a Hollywood star, ultimately becoming as vapid and cynical as those he had so long worshiped on the screen. The play was a critical and popular success, running for 398 performances.

Merton Gill is a clerk in a general store in Simsbury, Illinois, who gains stardom in Hollywood. His knowledge and interest in the “art” of the movies is limited to the fan magazines and public relations interviews he devours, and so at the beginning of the play he is as easy a butt for jokes as is the movie industry itself. The summation of all his dreams is Beulah Baxter, the lead in the popular Hazards of Hortense serials to which Merton became addicted back in Simsbury. When he finally meets her, he finds not the sweet and simple ingenue she portrays but an oft-married, selfish starlet whose concerns about her art are as limited as her vocabulary. Tricked into appearing in a parody of his cinematic idol, Harold Parmalee, Merton becomes an overnight star. His gimmick is playing amusing roles seriously, which leads everyone (including the audience) to imagine that poor Merton is being used. In his final speech, however, which endeared him (and the play) to the Broadway audiences, Morton claims that he was not unwittingly used but that he had known what he was doing all along: He was creating satire so clever that most of his fans did not understand it.

Merton of the Movies was not the first parody of Hollywood, but it was one of the first stage productions to attempt the rapid scene shifts common to the medium it was satirizing. There are four acts and six scenes in this play, where Dulcy had three acts and one set only. Moreover, the action of the play unfolds before the audience as if they were watching a film in the process of being shot.

This play also presents the typical Connelly-Kaufman character: the innocent but honest man whose dreams are often compromised or negated by his own unwillingness or inability to act properly. Despite Connelly’s dreamily romantic views of life, his leads tend to gain only ironic successes, as here, when Merton’s very lack of talent makes him a star; the meaning of what he has learned about Hollywood (that is, that lack of talent does not make bad entertainment in the eyes of the moguls, but is perceived as “satire”) is lost on him. Still, Connelly and Kaufman could not be accused of writing satire in Merton of the Movies, for the message of the play is too light and the attacks too gentle.

Beggar on Horseback

Beggar on Horseback declared itself more forcefully on the subject of the worthwhile in art and also represented a further advance in the team’s stagecraft. Suggested by the German expressionist Paul Apel’s play Hans Sonnenstössers Höllenfahrt (pr. 1911), the play nevertheless is essentially Connelly and Kaufman’s own, as Alexander Woollcott pointed out in his introduction to the printed version.

Beggar on Horseback develops the old chestnut, “Put a beggar on horseback and he’ll outride the devil,” by depicting, in Connelly’s words, “a fantasy in which a young musician would go through a maze of kaleidoscopic experiences, the basic theme of which would be the ancient conflict of art and materialism.” Neil McRae is a good composer but an improvident man who compromises his talent by writing cheap orchestrations of the sort that periodically drift in his window from the street. His wealthy neighbors are the Cady family: Mr. Cady is a businessman from Neil’s hometown. Mrs. Cady is a society volunteer for worthy causes. Their daughter, Gladys, is a ray of sunshine who brings Neil candy for his tea, and Homer, the son, is perpetually morose. Neil’s friend, Dr. Albert Rice, suggests to Gladys that she marry Neil to give him the emotional and financial support he needs to get on with his writing. To calm his nerves, Neil takes a sleeping pill, and as he drifts off to sleep, Cynthia, to whom Neil has proposed, turns him down because she cannot support him as well as Gladys can.

The dream sequence that follows was remarkable for the Broadway stage of 1924: As Neil’s future life is played out, he watches himself marry Gladys, whose bouquet is made of dollar bills, in a ceremony accompanied by the kind of sporty music he had heard in his apartment. The hectic pace of their social life prevents Neil from composing, and when he takes a job in Cady’s widget business he begins to amass a fortune by day, which he and Gladys will spend at jazz clubs by night. He finally sells his symphony, but Gladys destroys the manuscript, and Neil in a rage kills all four Cadys.

Neil comes to trial with Mr. Cady as the judge; the chief witness is Mrs. Cady, the prosecutor is Homer, and the members of the jury are all dance instructors. Neil loses his case after presenting as evidence on his behalf a ballet composed by himself and Cynthia, and he is sentenced by the jury to write popular songs for the rest of his life. Bent on suicide, he takes another pill, and Cynthia promises to stand by him forever.

The dream sequence ends with Cynthia knocking on the real door of Neil’s apartment. Gladys breaks the engagement when she realizes that Neil’s true love is Cynthia, and the lovers remain together.

Here, for the first time, Connelly and Kaufman do more than merely ridicule: They state clearly what is valuable for the artist both objectively (in the realistic sequences) and subjectively (in the dream sequence). The realistic sections are portrayals (in the manner of Dulcy and Merton of the Movies) of the lovable innocents and the mendicant fools of 1920’s society. When in the dream one butler becomes two and those two become four, and so on, until the stage is literally filled with hustling butlers, the audience sees a dramatic representation of wealth overrunning the individual who possesses it. The play is also remarkable for the integral role that music plays in it. The authors were not afraid to follow their own artistic prescriptions, involving the music of Connelly’s friend (and for a time, roommate), the composer and critic Deems Taylor, as an essential part of rather than accompaniment to the dramatic movement of the play, both in the realistic and in the dream sequences. While many more revolutionary developments were taking place in the 1920’s in American experimental theaters—as well as in Europe—Beggar on Horseback introduced expressionism to Broadway, and for this alone the play deserves a place in American theatrical history.

The Green Pastures

The Green Pastures marked a significant advance in Connelly’s ambitions as a dramatist. In his previous plays, he had focused on a limited area of modern life: society life, Hollywood, business. In The Green Pastures, he attempted a unified retelling of the principal document of our culture within the context and language of rural Southern blacks. He was interested not in theological exactitude but rather in the humanistic message that even “De Lawd” comes to accept through his suffering: Humankind’s essential imperfection must be accepted, for people’s nature is to sin without regard to De Lawd’s praise or damnation; this is the cross both humanity and God, as symbolized by Jesus on the cross at the end of the play, must bear. Suffering ennobles the sufferer, human or divine, and the anguish of the realization of humankind’s nature is, in the closing words of the play, “a terrible burden for one man to carry.”

The first part of the play covers events from Creation to the Flood. These ten episodes begin with a Sunday school lesson presided over by Mr. Deshee, who tells his children about Heaven, Creation, Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, and Noah, showing how humankind fell from grace and how, with the Flood, it must begin again. Here is where Dulcy, Merton of the Movies, and Beggar on Horseback would have ended, full of promise, but Connelly was no longer satisfied to end on such a note. The end of part 1 finds De Lawd merely hopeful of the success of his new start and Gabriel downright uncertain.

Part 2 begins with two Heavenly Cleaners in De Lawd’s office complaining that a little speck on De Lawd’s horizon, Earth, is taking up too much of his time; Gabriel reports that the supply of thunderbolts is depleting without sufficient benefit for their use. De Lawd resolves to try once again with humankind, and he shows Moses how to trick Pharoah into letting his people out of Egypt. Joshua finally gets them to the Promised Land, but soon, in the words of Mr. Deshee, “dey went to de dogs again.” The scene changes to a Harlem-style nightclub with golden idols and money-changing priests that bring De Lawd to renounce his creation and declare that he will not save humankind again.

In scene 6 of part 2, the fall of Jerusalem is played out. De Lawd is so moved by the statement of faith in the God of Hosea given by Hezdrel—a character created without biblical authority and in certain respects morally superior to even De Lawd—that he turns to a dialogue with Gabriel on the nature of humankind, which can be so evil, yet so noble and courageous in the face of suffering. De Lawd realizes that he, too, must suffer for each new thing he learns about humankind, and the joint suffering of God and humanity is made manifest in the Crucifixion, seen in shadow on De Lawd’s wall. With this scene witnessed, the severe, noble black Lawd, now given hope in his creation for the first time, smiles broadly as the chorus sings “Hallelujah, King Jesus.”

The play was received with overwhelming critical and popular praise, even from African Americans, who, if they were offended by the stereotypical poverty and near-illiteracy of Mr. Deshee and his charges, were nevertheless elated at the acceptance Broadway audiences gave this all-African-American cast, behaving, with the exception of the Harlem-speakeasy Babylon scene, in a good and proper way. To what extent the simplistic figures of De Lawd and his minions and the hot-tempered, immoral, and occasionally violent characters such as Cain, Zeba, the Children of Noah, and the Children of Israel represented caricature with which the New York audience could feel comfortable, and to what extent they represented behavioral archetypes that transcend race, is an open question. Connelly himself left no doubt about how he viewed them:I never saw my play—and I certainly don’t now—as part of any civil rights movement, as for or against any movement. It was no more simply about a race of people than [ Gerhart Hauptmann’s] The Weavers say, or [ Maxim Gorky’s] The Lower Depths was simply about one particular class of people. My play had little to do with Negroes—or, rather, it had as much to do with yellow and white and red as it did with black. Green Pastures was, at heart, about humanity, but maybe that’s a little hard to explain today.

This play of simple faith in humankind came at the right time, as the United States was sinking into the Depression; with confusion and despair all around, Connelly brought hope and laughter to a darkening country.