Counsellor‐At‐Law

Counsellor‐At‐Law (1931), a play by Elmer Rice. [Plymouth Theatre, 397 perf.] George Simon ( Paul Muni) is an aggressive Lower East Sider who has clawed his way just about as far as a Jew could go in the legal profession of his day. With a probable eye to inching a few steps further, he marries a prominent, if cold, socialite. But his career is jeopardized when a bigoted society lawyer discovers that years before Simon had falsified evidence in a case. At the same time his wife runs off to Europe with her lover. Simon would jump from a window, but with the help of his sympathetic secretary, Regina ( Anna Kostant), he unearths incriminating material about the society lawyer, presses him into silence, and concludes he can lead a happy life with the loyal Regina. Although some critics felt there was a superfluity of characters, and that many of them verged on caricature, Robert Coleman spoke for the majority when he wrote of the play in the Daily News, “It has an inspired fire, a dramatic, compelling surge, a human realism and sufficient comedy relief.” The work was successfully revived in 1942.