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TIME: Almanac of the 20th Century
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TIME, Almanac of the 20th Century.ISO
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1930
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30sdesig
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1994-02-27
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<text>
<title>
(1930s) Design For Living
</title>
<history>
TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1930s Highlights
Theater
</history>
<article>
<source>Time Magazine</source>
<hdr>
Design for Living
</hdr>
<body>
<p>(January 30, 1933)
</p>
<p> Twelve years ago an ambitious, talented young Englishman came
to Manhattan and was disheartened to find the Land of
Opportunity a place where one seemed to divide one's time
between lying in bed in a cheap hotel, counting squashed insects
on the ceiling and sitting on park benches, hungry. This U.S.
appeared to have two bright spots, however, in the persons of
an actor and actress who were quite fond of each other and of
him. They were very considerate people. When the actress took
him to sing and play the piano for his supper at George S.
Kaufman's, she made sure that Mr. Kaufman also paid the cab
fare.
</p>
<p> Last week Manhattan audiences witnessed the dramatic fruit of
this long, three-cornered friendship. Design For Living--a
play about three people who love each other very much." The
erstwhile young Englishman, Noel Coward, had written it and was
acting in it. So were Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne.
</p>
<p> In spite of makeup which gives her eyelids a furry look and
her old tendency to read her more dramatic lines as though she
were giving a schoolroom recital of Elektra, Actress Fontanne
manages to be conspicuously charming in a role which is not a
paragon of lucidity. Actor Lunt is at all times expertly droll,
although his parts in The Guardsman and Reunion In Vienna appear
to have permanently endowed him with a Central European accent.
Actor Coward, particularly when he is imitating a butler on a
telephone and giving an interview to the Press, is, if possible,
more suavely comic than ever.
</p>
<p> Design For Living, which some spectators may find a bit
decadent in spots, is a worthy successor to, if not an
entertaining equal of, the playwright's previous Private Lives.
Its deficiency is in the kind of hysterical laughter which in
Private Lives fairly convulsed the graves sophisticate and
exalted Noel Coward to the front rank of fun-makers.</p>
</body>
</article>
</text>