Dunnigan's Daughter: John Golden Theatre, December 26, 1945

New York Times, December 27, 1945

'Dunnigan's Daughter' Makes Its Broadway Debut at the Golden

By LEWIS NICHOLS

S. N. Behrman is an acknowledged master of words, polite, highly polished, thoughtful, affable. In his new play, however, the servant has turned on the master. "Dunnigan's Daughter," with which the Theatre Guild opened its season last evening at the Golden, finds Mr. Behrman caught in the shining bands of his own phrases. The drama seems more like a literary exercise than something to be brought alive upon the stage; all sense of feeling and of warmth have been distilled away. The craftsman on this occasion has paid more attention to the form than to the substance and, pyramiding evil, has so overwritten at times that "Dunnigan's Daughter" is occasionally within winking distance of potential parody. This is not Mr. Behrman with his best pen.

The ethical dispute is between power and personal freedom, and the participants are a harsh, cynical businessman and his third wife —Dunnigan's daughter. The scene is Mexico, where the man, after the fashion of robber barons, is ignoring the rights of the natives; at the same time he is badly treating his wife. She decides to leave and is invited to go along with a Mexican artist, but having other plans, Mr. Behrman sends her forth with a young member of the United States State Department, an old friend. Dunnigan, incidentally, has committed suicide while in prison, and it is his daughter's discovery that her husband had something to do with it which finally sets her free of him.

Though one may grant Mr. Behrman his basic rights to a character study of the man of cynical power, he has not succeeded in making a good one. For a time Clay Rainier is believable, and then so much conversation takes place, so much well-written evil is poured over and by him, that the figure collapses of its own weight. The third act of "Dunnigan's Daughter" is undisguisedly mechanical, for all the world as though the daughter were going through the available men on the principle of eenie, meenie, minie. mo, and then picking one. Mr. Behrman does not trouble to explain what motivated the business man so that he became what he is, nor the wife; and he, himself, directs the ending rather than let it come about naturally.

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Dennis King is the business man, and, like the character, is much more believable at the beginning than at the end. At the start he makes Rainier a walking snarl, but when the Rainier home begins to come apart, he cannot keep up any better than can Mr. Behrman. June Havoc is the wife, playing her naturally rather than emotionally, which is practical and in order, and Richard Widmark is the forthright younger statesman. Luther Adler is the Mexican painter, the most likable of the author's set of figures, and he gives an amusing performance. Elia Kazan directed, and Stewart Chaney's setting is wide and wealthy.

Dunnigan's Daughter: John Golden Theatre, December 26, 1945