Dramatic Club Wouldn't Accept Undergraduate's Play, So Now He's Had it Produced on Broadway

Turned down by the Dramatic Club last year, Joseph M. V. Shapiro '36 took his play "So Proudly We Hail" to a New York producer. Last Tuesday he saw it open on Broadway.

Shapiro, who listed his intended vocation in the Album as playwright, wrote under the pseudonym of Joseph M. Viertel. He is 21 years old and prepared for Harvard at Staunton Military Academy, where perhaps he gathered the background for his work.

Set in Military Academy

The action of the drama is set in a boys' military academy; the cast is centered about Richard Cromwell, of motion picture fame, and is supported by Edwin Philips, John Call, Jean Rouverol, Charles Dingle, Edward Andrews, Ethel Jackson, Gordon Nelson, and Vernon Crane.

"The author of "So Proudly We Hail" doesn't like military academies and he says so with vigor and bitterness. Out of the raging violence of his indignation there arise the virtue and the weakness of his play. Amid the early season trivialities of the theater, with no play-wright seemingly concerned with any idea more vital than that an actress should stick to acting, there is something a bit exciting in the sight of a dramatist in deadly earnest, with a chip on his shoulder and his soul filled with the conviction that the institution he deplores is a national menace.

Note of Sincerity is Commendable

It makes for the sort of vital sincerity that is an important in the drama, even though you may be inclined to suspect that the matter under discussion has been taken a trifle overseriously."