178
PARTISAN RiEVIEW
is discovered in this setting would seem more at home in less opulent
circumstances-Mrs. Craig, for example, is really inconceivable as a
great lady with a staff of three house-servants, while she is quite easy
to imagine as a woman who does her own work. There is a continual
tension between the spectator's sociological memory and Mr. Kelly's
taste in decor:1tion which also keeps the KeiJy family constantly on the
move.
And here the question enters of how far conscious selection and
intelligence have directed Mr. Kelly's work. The printed versions of his
plays are prefaced by little gnomic sayings, quotations from himself,
which imply that he is under the impression that he is writing problem
plays. In
Behold the Bridegroom,
he did write a problem play about
the modern girl who, having loved many men, is incapable of the love
of one; in
R eflected Glory,
he treats the actress as a problem and con–
cludes that the life of the entertainer is incompatible with the life of
love. But even here the glass of water, the pocketbook, the maid, and
the wristwatch intrude on these commonplaces, just as, in the family
plays, other commonplaces out of sentimental drama plop into the glass
of water. It is possible that Mr. Kelly's best effects are nervous tics
which, in the course of years, have encroached more and more upon the
territory of his plays, pushing the plot to one side, in the same way that
the nervous tics of his characters have left them no room for feeling:
Mrs. Espenshade, trying on a white hat with a veil for her husband's
wedding, is diverted from her "natural" emotions. It seems probable
indeed that the conscious and voluntary drive of Mr. Kelly's talent is,
like his social plots, an avenue of platitude that misdirects his material.
Yet, as in the case of the
naif
painters, his very faults, the crudity of
his conceptions, the innocence of his allegories, become part of the sub–
ject, and, while distorting it, add to its grace. The distinction between
form and content vanishes; Mr. Kelly's phrasing, now stiff, now soft
and mawkish, sinks like a wax into the wooden images he is creating.
He remains an oddity, a manifestation of nature, from which he cannot
be disengaged, as a free artist can, for judgment.
Born Y esterday,
by Garson Kanin, the smash-hit comedy that pimps
for progressivism, brings sadistic farce and a
PM
editorial into closer
association than one would have thought possible. The little people's
spokesman here is a
New Republic
writer with glasses and a set of
Tom Paine who undertakes, for pay, the education of a gangster's mis–
tress. The unsuspecting enemy of the people is swindled out of his girl
and his private papers, not to speak of his money, and the cw·tain falls
on a victory for democracy. Coming out boldly against people who push
other people around, the play is ready with its own night-stick, borrowed
from George Kaufman, whenever truth or integrity of characterization
