But let us go back to the beginning. They say that it is a dull season in New York and that no one is spending money—at least for theatre tickets. Hence the frantic effort to whet the jaded appetites of the elusive theatre-goers.

Let us list some of the more sprightly attractions. Bear in mind that some of them have excellent qualities. There is, for instance, Somerset Maugham’s “The Circle,” telling of an old couple who have broken all the conventions and of a younger couple about to follow in their footsteps. It is told with lively cleverness. No, indeed, the young people do not find a moral in the experiences of their elders. At the end they dash away to investigate the illicit love-in-a-cottage stuff themselves and Mr. Maugham points out that in life it doesn’t matter “what you do as much as what you are.” And also that “you can do anything in this world if you’re prepared to take the consequences and consequences depend on character.” All of which is excellent mental food for the 1921 flapper.

Then there is Cosmo Hamilton’s “The Silver Fox,” a little epic of a philandering wife with a penchant for young men and abbreviated socks. Clever, too, but decadent.

Also we might note “Ambush,” the opus of a young woman who likes pretty things and who is aided and abetted by her mother. Papa is a poor commuter who wakes up when daughter introduces a flip and married gentleman friend. When he protests, daughter slaps his face and snaps “Damn you!” Still, there is some excuse for “Ambush.” At least it is well written.

Here we turn to the plain every day efforts to be insolently sensational at any price.

“Getting Gertie’s Garter” (note the chaste title), was one of the earliest of the sexly stimulants. But garters have lost their vogue and, anyway, the short skirts have ruined their novelty. So the piece did not seriously upset New York.

Then there’s “Lilies of the Field,” for instance, a demi-mondaine treatise anent certain lilies who “toil not neither do they spin,” or however it was that the Good Book let down the gold diggers of the old days. This is especially recommended for the eighteen-year-old flapper.

With which we arrive at the real blush producers of the year. Consider “Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife.” Here a young woman, newly married, invites her old sweetheart to her boudoir at midnight, gets him squiffy and persuades him to undress and climb into bed. And undress he does, right down to his B. V. D.’s in front of the footlights, the appreciative heroine and the audience. Said heroine then clambers in—and friend husband appears. Yes, it’s all to teach hubby a lesson (one must make some concession to the police) and the B. V. D. person gets the air.

Broadway had been busily getting out its shekels to see Bluebeard and the B. V. D. youth when along came Avery Hopwood’s “The Demi-Virgin.” Now, Mr. Hopwood’s demi-virgin is not the demi-vierge of the French, from whom the noun comes. Since this is a family paper, we will explain demi-vierge as a young and ambitious lady who is broadminded up to a certain point. Mr. Hopwood’s heroine, however, is a movie queen who deserts her husband, another movie idol, on their wedding night. Although the husband finally succeeds in capturing his demi-wife in her boudoir and thereupon starts out to—well—anyway the real incident of the piece is the aforementioned strip poker party, where a half dozen film fillies discard garment after garment in a game designed to be thrilling. It isn’t a mere strip poker party but a “strip cupid” affair, the first to arrive at the cupid state to be the winner—or loser. The game progresses until it is a mere matter of a card’s turn who is to be cupid when, of course, the thing is ended.