Readers Theater

I spent the early part of this evening with my Library buddies at the Guerneville Regional Library at their lone and delayed production of some of this years Reader’s Theater plays.  It was an enjoyable hour from 7 to 8.  The one-act plays were cute, pointed, and short.  It was a one-time performance; so, tune in next year when there will be more plays and more performances.  An appreciative audience packed the Maggie Boynton Forum room with over sixty attendees, many of the literati of Guerneville.

That left me at home with no playoffs, and many things cancelled because of high-water.  So, I found a movie, of course an old movie, 1932 “Forbidden” with Barbara Stanwyck (already a leading star at 25 in her 16^th film), and Adolphe Menjou, at 42 in his 81^st film, as an “older” man.  Frank Capra was 35, and this was his 19^th film.  He authored the story and directed it.  It was a wining theme – girl falls in love, has a baby, sticks by her man, suffers, but the child comes first. 

The plot line won academy awards that year for Helen Hayes in “The Sin of Madelon Claudet” and Marie Dressler in “Emma”.  But of course, silent picture had seasoned these stars, and the academy paid its due.  Capra’s story was hasty and not well thought out.  These actors were good, but not yet well-developed enough for Oscars.  This is worth watching for that very reason: a young Capra, directing an ingenue like Stanwyck, and now using the aging Menjou as a stability factor in the theme.  A seminal film for many persona like Stanwyck and Capra, but also for Hollywood as it thrust the final nail in the coffin of silents, and welcomed in the new casts of young people into stardom.