The Playgoer

Three hours and a half of musical comedy is too much in any league, and when caught last Monday night Lew Brown's "Yokel Boy Makes Good" at the Shubert, ran to this length. The show, however, was pretty good, and with judicious pruning it might well turn into a smash hit. It has tunes; "A Boy Named Lem, and a Girl Named Sue" is far from corny and there were several others which may break into the summer Hit Parade.

To begin with it should be pointed out that even Harvard indifference will melt before the eye-filling chorines and showgirls. To a reviewer accustomed to nothing more startling than Radcliffe citizens and Vincent Club members the girls were indeed an ocular tonic. Tall and willowy, each was a tribute to Mr. Brown's excellent taste in such matters.

And then there are the stars. Jack Pearl, forsaking der Baron Munchausen, appears as Rubbish, the foreign-born Hollywood director whose fame it seems is based on a movie he once made about a boy and a girl and a dike. Rubbish, we discover in the first scene, is filming the Battle of Lexington and, always a stickler for accuracy, the scene is filmed in Lexington, Mass. There live such citizens as Buddy Ebsen--you guessed it, he's the Yokel Boy--Lois January, Judy Canova and other individuals who by the middle of the first act have all wandered out to Hollywood and are more or less occupied in Rubbish's Colossal Studios.

The plot is woven about the slim thread of the Yokel Boy's success in Hollywood and his sweetheart's -- Miss January -- failure therein. Thin though it is, the story might easily support a shorter play with the aid of its already first-rate score, its lavish settings, and its nifty costumes. By this time it's probably a good show.