Hungary's Molnar

THE PLAYS OF FERENC MOLNAR-- Vanguard--($6).

This book's 823 pages, published last fortnight simultaneously in four languages in Budapest, Berlin, Rome, Lcndon and New York, contain all of Ferenc Alomar's 20 plays. Written in Hungary, most of them have been, are being, played the world over. Some resumes:

The Lawyer. While robbing the Sarkany apartment, an urbane thief who happens to be Lawyer Sarkany's best friend and client, surprises the lawyer's wife with her lover, a rustic police lieutenant. Gallic, comic complications ensue.

The Devil, glib, cynical, disguised as a man, adroitly diminishes the distance between two who love, an artist and a banker's wife. With this farce Producer Henry W. Savage introduced Molnar to the U.S. in 1908.

Liliom, a Budapest barker about to become a father, gets trapped holding up a cashier, commits suicide. Years later, returning to do a good deed on earth, he forgets his purpose, slaps his daughter, now grown up. U. S. audiences relished Liliom's gruff swagger, wept copiously over his wife's dumb agony, over the pair's never-mentioned love. Philosopher Liliom: "Nobody's right--but they all think they are. A lot they know!"

The Guardsman. To catch his actress-wife in an infidelity, an actor-husband masquerades as a Russian guardsman, woos her in disguise. Later she says she recognized he was acting, acted herself. The question is, did she?

The White Cloud. Fantasy and symbolism, wherein 27 war orphans find their fathers all gold-clothed on a white cloud. Says a father: "Back home the village thinks that [war is] all bugles and flowers. . . ."

Carnival. Camilla's lover, honestly wishing Camilla to divorce her husband as well as return the diamond she found, thus proves himself too "small," too respectable, for her "great adventure."

The Swan. Satire on royalty. Swan-haughty Alexandra, instructed to flirt with her tutor to arouse the Crown Prince, falls in love with the former but marries the latter.

Marshal. "Accidentally" shot by the host whose wife he has seduced, an actor reveals the attempted jealousy murder. The wife, to save the husband, denies her love though her actor is apparently dying. (In one act.)

Mima. Exciting, spectacular drama. Hell's smart rulers, to destroy the good in man, invent a sin-mill. Through it goes Janos, model man. At the last moment the one good act he does makes the machine explode. The act: forgiveness of the charming sin-woman, Mima (in the U. S., Lenore Ulric). Says Molnar: "The machine itself is nothing more than a visible combination of our machine world and the psychological grind."

The Glass Slipper. Kitchen-Wench Irma, nude bather, kitten's wetnurse, joins a brothel when the Mr. Sipos whom she loves and serves marries another. Discovering his wife unfaithful, Mr. Sipos says, "I mayn't have an automobile, but I have honor." He casts off the wife, retrieves Irma.

Riviera is the title of the show-window display in the department store where Mr. Misch struts as floorwalker. A salesgirl, first devoted to Mr. Misch, leaves him to go with the store-owner to the real Riviera.

Still Life. After many moral pretenses, the actor finally drinks the champagne a richer lover has given the actress. (In one act.)

The Play's the Thing that deceives the young composer. In love with the prima donna, he overhears a lusty scene in her boudoir. A clever playwright writes the scene into a play for her so it will seem she was only rehearsing.

The Significance. Unlike England's Shaw satirizing human institutions, Hungary's Molnar satirizes human emotions. Since institutions change while human nature does not, lyric Molnar will probably "date" less than pedantic Shaw when later generations take an accounting. Like Shaw, like any playwright with broad genius, Molnar is interested in and can handle all manner of people--slaveys, socialites, policemen, princes--not for what they stand for but as kinds of people underneath. For the proud of this world he has a pathos of precision, for the humble, a tender irony, ridicule softened by tears. His many-mooded plays abound in what actors call "fat parts"--character-full roles, with unique "business."

Inanimate objects, too--hand-organs, opera-cloaks, acacia-blossoms--the rare Molnar dramaturgy makes almost articulate. Much is said about the Molnar technique--brilliant, original. In The Play's the Thing the curtain rises on characters discussing the best way to begin a play. In Mima he builds up his climax by repeating a scene three times. In both these plays, in most of Molnar, there are several planes of reality, arranged provocatively and with an eye to permanence.

The Author. "1878, I was born in Budapest; 1896, I became a law student at Geneva; 1896 I became a journalist in Budapest; 1897 I wrote a short story; 1900 I wrote a novel; 1902 I became a playwright at home; 1908, I became a playwright abroad; 1914 I became a war correspondent; 1916 I became a playwright once more; 1918 my hair turned snow-white; 1925 I should like to be a law student at Geneva once more."

Anecdotes about Molnar are as innumerable and revealing as those about Anatole France. Here are two:

Slap. Once Molnar irritably slapped his crying baby. For that, his first wife, Margarat Veszi, divorced Mm. In Liliom he wrote that, in love, slaps are necessary, painless. He sent the play to her, remarried her on the strength of it. At Liliom's premiere he, nervous, slapped her. Again divorce.

Duel. For Prima Donna Sari Fedak, Molnar wrote Carnival. Result: she became a famed legitimate actress and his second wife. Molnar then wrote Heavenly and Earthly Love for a more beautiful woman, Lili Darvas, who, starring in it, became a famed actress also. Enraged, Actress Fedak responded by getting Melchior Lengyel, Hungary's second greatest playwright, to write a play with a role in which she could and did show herself superior to Actress Darvas. Outraged, Molnar wrote Mima and The Glass Slipper, both for Actress Darvas. Upshot: a divorce (Molnar v. Fedak) in which Lili Darvas figured as but one of 142 correspondents. Beautiful Darvas became a national idol, Molnar's third wife.