Bad Days for Theatre-goers

And Worse Days for the Actors and Managers

LEANDER RICHARDSON

WILLIAM A. BRADY said recently that before the new year had gone very far there would be ten theatres in New York City without tenants. A. L. Erlanger at about the same moment is reported to have ventured the prediction that within a short time there might be four surviving managements but probably no more in the theatrical business.

These two men usually oppose one another, greatly increasing the working hours of sundrylawyers and confirming the ancient adage that there are two sides to every question. If Mr. Erlanger thinks it will rain to-day, Mr. Brady can see a long dry spell ahead. If Mr. Brady opines that the public taste is shifting to the serious drama, Mr. Erlanger begins to make contracts for comic operas. Several court justices feel that they cannot go on their vacations without assurances from counsel for both Mr. Brady and Mr. Erlanger that they will start no further litigation against each other until the mills of justice have a fair chance to grind out some other business.

IT thus becomes apparent that if Mr. Brady and Mr. Erlanger concur in the opinion that the theatre is a very sick lady there must be an auspicious opening for some specially talented physician to step forward and make a name for himself.

The theatre certainly is in a most alarming state, affording an occasion for the doctors to violently disagree in the diagnostic consultation.

Mr. Brady thinks the chief cause of invalidism is the war tax, the most distressing feature of which is that it will be increased rather than abolished.

When it comes to paying forty cents extra for two seats in a first class theatre, in addition to the many other advances in outlay on every hand, says Mr. Brady, people begin to consider whether the theatre after all is a necessity or a luxury,

"And," continues Mr. Brady, "to show you what a thorough knowledge of the war tax has been absorbed by the general public, a gentleman purchased from a speculator two tickets for the opening night of 'Miss 1917' at the Century Theatre, paying $30 for them, and gave the speculator $3 besides, figuring the war tax at ten per cent, upon the price he paid, and not upon the face value of the tickets!"

MR. ERLANGER expressed the conviction that conditions are neither better nor worse than in other enterprises which "do not provide actual necessities." The overnight change that faced the public when men who had been able to measure their expenditures were compelled to pay extra taxes on every mouthful of food, telephone calls and telegrams, and in every way meet new and distressing appeals from others, had "put a joyous, smiling nation into the dumps of depression" from which it would not emerge until after the reconstruction period which will follow the declaration of peace.

The Messrs. Shubert, whose theatrical ventures extend to every corner of the country, comprehend the situation in this brief summary :

"1. It is purely temporary.

"2. Natural decline after Liberty Bond issue, theatre tax and the Russian and Italian collapse.

"3. Improvement had already set in. For example, A1 Jolson closed a week of one-nights in Springfield, Mass., to $14,000 on the week —had to close on account of car shortage."

This it will be perceived is quite the most optimistic expression that has been voiced. It is the only one which treats the state of the patient as purely transitory and already entering the highly desirable period of convalescence. To be sure, it comes from a very close relative who may be depended upon to cheer up the sick room as far as possible, inasmuch as he is not likely to inherit much in case the worst comes to the worst—still, a cheerful note where there is so much depression, has its value.

WE now have the opinions of three exceedingly influential powers in the amusement business, Brady, Erlanger and the Shuberts. It will be noticed that there is no excess or ostentation of agreement regarding the true origin of the theatres' distress, so that we may profitably continue our pursuit through further trails to find the source of information.

The treasurer of one of the most widely favored theatres in New York was very much inclined to coincide in the view that the war tax is an exceedingly serious matter. His experience indicated that the principal difficulty aroused by the present assessment lay in its influence upon the gentler sex.

"Men applying at the box office window," he asserts, "rarely murmur about Uncle Sam's holdout, but whenever maid, wife or widow approaches I know conflict is at hand.

"Probably Father when leaving home in the morning has neglected to impress upon the idol of his bosom that she is not alone to pay four dollars for the seats out of the five-spot he gave her for the purpose, but also to check off forty cents more for the government. Very likely lie has never even mentioned the war tax, and—well, you know how we treasurers stand already with the ladies, heaven bless them!

"Mister Veeyah, of Mexico, the late Captain Kidd, and the malefactor arrested the other day for robbing the poor box, are all pure, spotless angels of light in the eyes of woman, lovely woman, when compared with the ticket seller in a New York theatre.

"Thus, when we have taken down and exhibited thirty pairs of orchestra tickets and returned twenty-eight to the rack, and the fiver is in the drawer, and we pleasantly push sixty cents change toward the charming customer, the transaction has merely begun. As it progresses the line in front of the box office grows longer and longer and then gradually fades away as some persons become exhausted, others have appointments overdue, and still others think the treasurer is abusing the weeping woman before him who must surely be his wife.

"And finally, when there are no more explanations to be made, and the outraged lady can endure this infamy no longer, she tosses the tickets back into the office and demands the return of her money."

A TICKET broker (they greatly prefer the term as against the offensive word speculator) was the soul of expectant urbanity until the investigating committee of one inquired as to the condition of business, whereupon his features stiffened immediately and he pounded the counter in a manner suggesting that he had profited from the tickets of so many plays each with its punch as to have become a broker with a superabundance of that greatly desired dramatic quality.

"There ain't no business," he exclaimed with mingled contempt and derision for commercial conditions and the language of his adoption.

"Why ain't there?" pursued the questioner, perfectly at home in the going.

Not presuming to be an expert dialectician the writer hereof will be content to state the broker's conclusions in a general way, recording as preliminary thereto the distinct impression that there is something in them.

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It appears that most of the young fellows who buy theatre seats as a regular habit have gone to the service of their country, so tills source of income is closed; most of the older fellows left behind are dismayed with what they perceive before them in the matter of income and excess profits taxation; the first and second Liberty I^oans have sopped up about all the real money in the country worth speaking of; the Y. M. C. A. and the Red Cross have taken over the rest of what was left after the various war charities fine-combed the nation; and the women folks are in a naturally gloomy state of mind over the prospects facing their boys gone to the front— so why should there be any business?

Hey, why should there be? There ain't nothing to it. Also, why are we in the war anyhow? What for should the show business be put on the blink so a war must happen?

The writer has no answer handy and puts the questions in the story solely to make it more difficult. And as a final and totally undeniable clincher, most of the shows are extremely bad, anyway.

A MAN in mercantile life who regularly gives up to a ticket broker for first night seats and occasionally writes to the papers in bitter denunciation of the criminal collusion of the box office in the nefarious business, required no pressure to express his favorite solution of the existing depression. He is perpetually and often garrulously indignant uponthis subject—thus:

"Can you buy a decent seat at the box office of any New York theatre where there is a successful production—that is, a production, that anybody wishes to see? You cannot. Why not? Because the speculators have got them all. How did the speculators get them all? Mostly by going to Philadelphia, or Atlantic City, or Stamford, or New Haven, or wherever the play was tried out, and if it was any good, buying up the biggest part of the lower floor for the first four, six or eight weeks in New York and paying cash for the whole lot. If the play goes over on the first night on Broadway, the speculators who were left out of the wholesale transaction secure the remaining downstairs scats by paying the management twenty-five cents apiece for them over the regular price.

"The half-way successes sell most of their tickets to the cut rate agencies with the result that you who buy your two dollar seats at the box-office quite probably find yourself sitting by a garlic-saturated alien who paid seventy-five cents for his share of the entertainment at the hand-me-down establishment. So, if you desire to see the good things you must pay double, and if you patronize the just-asgood ones you may not be very well pleased—from the stage—and not at all socially elevated—by contact with your immediate neighbor.

"The managers are finding out that even the public will turn finally. I hope they are finding it out in time to mend their ways and save their skins—but it may not be easy for them to learn new tricks after having dealt in the old ones so long."

A CONSERVATIVE producing manager who desired to remain unknown in this discussion said that admission prices were too high for hard times, but there was no chance of their being lowered while the costs of manufacture and carrying charges were at their present altitude. Salaries are greater than ever through the competition of the motion pictures. Rents have advanced immensely. Newspaper advertising, show printing, bill posting, costumes, scenery, everything that enters into the making of entertainment has gone sky high.

"Nobody is to blame. The condition is brought about through the natural course of events, but it has hit the theatre rather harder than any other business, because we have gone as far as we can in our prices and there seems to be apparently no end in sight to what we must pay for our production and for their upkeep."

A SCENE painter of entirely conservative business methods said: "Canvas is practically out of the market at any price. Lumber costs more than twice as much as it did two years ago. Certain paints are much more expensive than champagne. Carpenters who can command from eight to ten dollars a day in the shipbuilding and munition plant cities cannot be expected to work for thirty-five dollars a week in New York. We must now receive $1,800 or $2,000 for a scene which we could afford to sell for $1,000 twenty-four months ago."

So it looks pretty unpromising for the patient in the darkened chamber who is suffering from what the doctors call "a complication of diseases," such as the war tax; the overnight compulsion upon every citizen to meet an extra tax on everything he eats; the Liberty Loan issues, theatre tax and the Russian and Italian collapse; the inability of the gentler sex to refrain from deadly combat with the ticket man; the absence of the young fellows at the front and the various problems of the old fellows and others left behind; the wicked collusion between the boxoffice and the ticket sharks; and the big prices and the impossibility of lowering them owing to the great advance in expenses.

IS it surprising that the victim of all these ills lies between burning fever and cold perspiration, moaning and muttering in her sleep, totally impervious to treatment? Or that the consultation of eminent medical savants called into the case results in no prescription at all adequate to cope with this most puzzling combination of maladies?