HARVARD PLAYWRIGHTS SCORE BIG SUCCESSES

Two of the most successful plays now running on Broadway are products of Harvard playwrights, Fred Ballard, and Cleves Kinkead, both graduates of Professor Baker's Englsih 47. Mr. Ballard's "Young America" has been written since he left Harvard, but Mr. Kinkead's Common Clay", last year's Craig Prize Play which had the record run of seventeen weeks at the Castle Square Theatre, was written while here. The fact that seats for both these plays are selling eight weeks ahead is the strongest possible refutation of Broadway's former asseveration that the University's professor made playwrights are too impracticable for New York.

"Young America" is a distinctly American comedy in three acts. Mr. Bellard has not lost the deep sense of humor that he showed in "Believe Me. Xantippe." the Craig Prize Play of two years ago. The present play began life in Atlantic City as "Me and My Dog," being first produced at Nixon's Apolio Theatre on July 12. Renamed, it began its New York run on Saturday, August 28. Without exception, the critics hailed the play as a distinct success. It is the dramatic story of the adventures of two bad boys and a clever dog, the latter being in the New York Heralds estimation, the leading "man", who "played" with finesse and "tact". "Young America" was written round the juvenile court idea, and with this institution as a background; the author has treated the life of the youthful offenders with such understanding sympathy that he brought forth many such comments as that of the New York press: "Memory fails to bring to mind a more human and affecting bit of playwriting than this modest and unassuming little piece."

With the other play, "Common Clay" the local audiences are more familiar because of its long run at the Castle Square before Mr. A. H. Woods took it to New York for presentation there. This is only Mr. Einkead's second play, the first to be produced being a one-act piece "The Fourflushers" which was first put on by the Dramatic Club in the spring of 1914. The New York stars of the prize play are John Mason and Jane Cowl, both admirably fitted for the parts for which they are cast,-as Judge Samuel Filson and Eilen Neat. "Common Clay" is the greater drama if the comments of the New York press may lead to any conclusions. The New York Advertiser says the play "dares to depart from conventionality and attains a swiftness and surety of movement and a logic of events by its own methods. There are no lagging moments. Its people are alive"; and the Morning World: "it lends itself to tense situations, it is direct and culminative in interest, and it has the cardinal melodramatic quality of sympathetic appeal."

A third former student of Professor Baker who has achieved another Broadway success this autumn is Mrs. Beulah Dix Flebbe, not, however, a graduate of English 47. Her war play "Moloch" is enjoying a successful run. Two members of the Dramatic Club are assisting in this production: T. C. Browne '15, assistant stage manager, and D. L. Kennedy'17, in the cast