"Design for Living." At the Plaza.
NOEL COWARD wrote Design for Living as a play for himself and his two friends, Lynn Fontanne and Alfred Lunt. They acted it in New York, where it did very well. No one has tried to produce it here, apparently because it is considered certain that the Lord Chamberlain would object. The film version, directed by Ernst Lubitsch, is said to be very different from the play, yet one cannot help feeling that the British Censor —unless he has suddenly revised his standards—passed it only because the meaning of sonic of the allusions escaped him. - However, there may be another reason. The Censor will stand a good deal-so long as sex is treated as an entertainment ; he begins to feel nervous only when it is treated seriously. In Design for Living sex is treated solely as an entertainment ; in fact, it is the entertainment. A girl who is friendly with two painter and it would-be dramatist—
young men—a would-be cannot decide which she wants. After trying to live with them both platonically, she becomes the mistress of each in turn. Finding this rather awkward, she leaves them and marries an advertising agent, tires of hint, and returns to her two lovers, who by this time are successful and wealthy. - Lubitsch has evidently enjoyed himself in decorating this elegant story with neat touches of pictorial comedy. It is all very clever, sometimes really witty, seldom very pleasant. Miriam Hopkins, as adaptable as she is intelligent, steps delicately through the girl's part, but Gary Cooper and Fredric March arc oddly east as the young men. 'l'o anyone who remembers them in more virile roles it would hardly scent surprising if they were to stop half-way through and say " This is nonsense. Let's clear out."
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