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<1Ue GREAT WHITE WAY
AloWes Pi/f Ummph in the World's Most Spectacular Streetl
Don't be at all surprised, if as you walk down postwar Broadway, soap bubbles float from gaily colored translucent boxes of soap chips, juice drips into a five-story glass from a luscious orange floating in midair, coffee brews in a building-high percolator as the steam drifts skyward, animated children, teen-agers and grownups, sip thirst-quenching liquids from a fifty-foot bottle. We could go on for days describing the fantastic postwar ideas which Douglas Leigh has been dreaming up during the dim-out and brown-out.
Leigh is the fellow who planned many of the pre-war spectaculars for Times Square. When the war blacked out the lights of Glitter Street he just folded up shop and entered the Navy. Now he is back in his Sth Avenue office and is talking in terms of a new and more spectacular
Broadway; of the effect the new zoning laws (requiring set-backs in building facades at various levels) will have; of painting with light, of plastics and mechanisms.
What started all this anyway ? What made the Broadways of American cities what they are today? One word tells the entire story — "Theatres."
Movies — A Community Seed
Showmen, with their natural flair and highly developed skill for the spectacular, built the Glitter Streets. Their signs grew larger and larger as competition grew more intense. Their showplaces became more pretentious as patronage increased. One new theatre attracted another and it was the theatres' pulling power which
Broadway w ll get a continuous bubble bath if the Douglas Leigh concept of a display to sell soap powder finds a sponsor. A similar treatment with exploding cereal flying from a giant box is also among the postwar spectacles in the planning stage.
made Times Square and the main stems of other cities a meeting place for people in a spending mood. This magnetic role played by the theatre can be seen as the motive power of business community growth in towns and cities across the entire face of this country. Theatres spearhead "the Broadways" everywhere.
We can think back to the Times Square of the '20's when "Beau Geste" was playing at the old Criterion Theatre. The film title in two lines reached from marquee level to the roof of the building. Thousands of clear 100 watt electric bulbs turned the night to day for blocks around. When "Old Ironsides" played at the same theatre a giant replica with actually firing salute guns was briefly mounted on the marquee and facade of the building until the city forced
Orange juice dripping into a huge glass built around the corner of a Broadway building from a captive orange balloon will heighten the thirst of Times Square visitors if Mr. Leigh has his way. Plastics and light will play an important role in such projects.