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- <text>
- <title>
- (1930s) The Petrified Forest
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1930s Highlights
- Theater
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- The Petrified Forest
- </hdr>
- <body>
- <p>(January 14, 1935)
- </p>
- <p> In The Petrified Forest, Playwright Robert Sherwood has
- magnificently presented one tumultuous afternoon and evening in
- a roadside service station in the far West. Apparently just as
- much at home in the Black Mesa Bar-B-Q as he was in Hannibal's
- tent (The Toad to Tome) or post-War Austria (Reunion in Vienna),
- Playwright Sherwood has given a humorous and dramatic
- three-dimensional panorama of the hamburg and gas-peddling
- Maples, their young, ex-fullback helper, the rich and
- insufferable Chisholms who drive up in their Duesenberg
- limousine. Things really begin to hum when Duke Mantee's mob
- arrives at the front end of a nation-wide man-hunt.
- </p>
- <p> Humblest passer-by is Alan Squier (Leslie Howard, taking
- temporary leave of cinema to keep from "going stale"). A young
- intellectual tired of it all, he makes complete arrangements
- with Duke Mantee to "put the slug on him" so that the Maples'
- daughter Gabrielle (pert Peggy Conklin of The Pursuit of
- Happiness) can collect his insurance and go to France.
- </p>
- <p> The final scene, with lights out and the Mantee gang
- exchanging gunfire with the deputies outside while Alan and
- Gabrielle lie on the floor with their arms around each other,
- should raise audiences' hackles higher than anything on the
- Manhattan stage since the Group Theatre began producing its
- blood-&-thunder Red melodramas. Spectators get to hoping
- desperately that in the general gun-play, Duke Mantee (able
- Humphrey Bogart in a stubble beard) will somehow "forget to
- shoot Actor Howard, who has turned in another of his fragile,
- impressively assured impersonations to adorn a notable career.
- But everyone must know his jig is up when he tells Actress
- Conklin: "We'll be together always--in a funny sort of way."
- </p>
-
- </body>
- </article>
- </text>
-