Variety (January 1953)

LEGITIMATE 275 wwItiMdar. January 7, 1953 Forly-tevenlh /^RJETT Annivertary The Day the Ticket Brokers Trembled By MILTON M. RAISON Hollywood. uiphard Maney, who was once embalmed in a play by Hecht and Charles MacArthur called “20th Century,” Be ? ?J h0 has been, like Bernard Shaw, outliving his own WJi c once a man of baser sod. Before he became le !nueS for the Great Tallulah, he Interpreted such Oncers as Jed Harris and Billy Hose for the American In fact, during Jed Harris’ more ethereal days, Maney was described as Jed’s representative on earth. ti was during this period on Broadway that Maney and t inhabited different floors of the Sardi Building. I was ‘ ae ent for Schwab & Mandel, who then had two J[? nn their hands, “Good News”.and “New Moon,” while Maney handled two sellout plays, “Front Page” and “Co- qU As t was my occasional wont, I strolled into Maney’s office ne noon with the intention of taking him to the Dutch- man’s for lunch. We had met the night before, or rather parlier that morning, in various speakeasies. Our trails had crossed, mingled, gotten lost and finally vanished. I had a hunch .that Maney felt just as I did and could do with one of the Dutchman’s excellent pick-me-ups. When I walked into his office, I saw that his case of double-jitters was complicated by the following tableau: Charlie MacArthur was hanging out of the window by one wiry wrist. Seven stories below lay hard cement which could dubiously be softened only by a passing book- maker or an actor’s agent. Screaming at the top of his lungs and begging Charlie to desist was Hecht, who suf- fered from acute agrophobia, which, they tell me, is fear of high places. This, evidently, was one of MacArthur’s routines. Whenever the mood hit him, or the collaboration was not going smoothly, Charlie would climb out of the nearest window. and hang there until Hecht fainted or burst into tears or ran screaming out of the room. Maney was chuckling, but knowing him well I de- tected a frantic note in his chuckling. His face was white, his eyes red and he was gripping the desk. This, of all mornings, was no time for him to cope with one of Mac- Arthur’s pixie moods. When he saw me, he grabbed his hat—or rather set it more firmly on his head, for he always wore it every- where—and ran out, abandoning the insane playwrights to their fate. Since they subsequently lived to write “20th Century,” it’s obvious that MacArthur eventually climbed back into Hecht’s arms. But going dow^the elevator with Maney, I saw that my colleague was in bad shape indeed. He shook like an aspen and snarled like a lion because the elevator boy was not going faster. When we reached the street, Maney confessed that he needed a drink as badly as I did—maybe worse, but he just couldn’t stand the cozy back-kitchen atmosphere of the Dutchman’s that day. As a matter of fact, he couldn’t see going into any public place. Because of the recent performance, he had developed claustrophobia, which they tell me is fear of being crowded in. He wanted to be alone—maybe with me. At 20 Slugs a Copy Also the thought of a whiskey sour, or beer or ale or any of the plebian drinks gave him the shudders. When I suggested champagne, ironically (it was then $20 a bottle), Maney agreed with alacrity that champagne was the very drink he needed to calm his nerves. Since I don’t think we had $20 between us—because of our early morning excursions—that posed a neat prob- lem. Of course we could go to any of the four boxoffices exhibiting the Schwab & Mandel and Jed Harris hits and sign a tab. But that seemed too easy—and besides, we were over-tabbed. Fortunately, I had engaged a hotel room in midtown New York only that morning, and I still had the key in my pocket. Maney and I repaired there. He took one look at the room, which was still unmade, moved with disgust and phoned down for a suite. We were given one on the same floor. The suite was large, sumptu- ous, clean. Now, we had the proper setting for the cham- pagne. But the major problem—the wine itself—was still unsolved. “This is a fine kettle of fish,” said Maney, whose dialog was occasionally stilted. “Here we are—with four of the biggest hits in town on our hands—and no champagne!” Then, he sat up suddenly; we looked at §ach other, and something clicked. There were two phones in the suite, one in the bedroom and one in the parlor. ' We kept them busy for the next half hour. Every ticket broker pn* Broadway received the same threat: If he didn’t deliver at once a bottle of champagne to Suite 3B of our hotel, Maney and I would see to it that he no longer received any choice seats for our four hit shows. ... The threat in itself was ludicrous. The buy had been made a long time ago,-and the theatre treasurers were certainly not going to allow a couple of press agents with hangovers to interfere with their way of life—which* was to distribute the choice seats as they, or the management, saw fit. But there is something occult in ticket-brokering (more oiten called ticket-speculating in-those atavistic days)— something tenuous and worrisome. The ticket brokers, who laughed in our ears, laughed very much as Maney aa chuckled earlier, with tight frenzy. The'show’s con- suiuted a good part of their livelihood and they weren’t going t° tamper with Kismet. ' March of the Magnums twirled our long-stemmed glasses and drank like gentle- men. The first bottle went down awfully fast. We didn’t wait quite as long for the second one to chill. The third one was almost warm. Meanwhile, the aroused treasurers of our theatres had decided to see for themselves what the blazes was going on. They arrived at 3B led by the late and beloved E. A. MacAuley of the 46th Street Theatre. They were amused, but they were also thirsty. Maney and I decided that we should share some of the spoils with the press and calls went out to Dick Watts, Johnny Byram, Ward Morehouse and others. An hour later, the place was jammed with people. Two hours later, we were drinking warm bathtub gin out of bathroom tumblers. Nobody knows what happened later. But who cares? Are Drama Schools Fulfilling Their Purported Objectives? By EUGENE BURR Anyone who’s ever been exposed to theatrical publicity knows that the money made by a successful Broadway show could support a brace of maharajahs for years—or maybe even pay the expenses of a Congressional commit- tee. The dramatist, you gather, rents himself a 24-room penthouse and writes his next play on a gold-plated typewriter with a ribbon of scented mauve; the producer fills his bathtub with champagne and showgirls; the star papers his dressing room with yesterday’s bonds. All this is very nice—and it might be even nicer if it were true. Fortunes are made by successful shows, of course; but it may come as a surprise to a lot of spotlight-glam- ored professionals in the show busi- ness to realize that the real money on Broadway—on a year-in, year-out, overall basis—is made by a lot of people most of them have never heard of. They’re the people who run the schools that ostensibly teach stage-struck adolescents how to act. The urge of the American adolescent to make a public exhibition of himself—or, as is even more usual, herself— is an amazingly widespread phenomenon. For the most part the kids are divided sharply into two types; a very large class that sees in the theatre an easy way to satisfy an abnormally enlarged ego, with the stage serving as a stepping-stone to Hollywood; and a very small class that just wants to act, and can’t conceive of doing anything else. Eugene Burr Do Schools.Help? There remain local little theatres, shunned by kids be- cause they’re home-town affairs and most of the young- sters want to plunge up to their plucked eyebrows into New York as quickly as possible; and, since many of the tank-town drama-dens are run by opinionated and incom- petent torchbearers anyhow, this is just as well. There also remain the schools and the apprentice groups run by some summer stock companies, which often cost as much as the school and give less. The schools can be roughly divided into four types. First are the recognized, larger academies, plus a number of smaller schools run by able professionals. If the kid goes to a seminary of this type he can sometimes, with luck, complete the curriculum without doing any real damage to his incipient talent. On the other hand, the best of the top-bracket schools do sincerely (and successfully) try to give their students stage training under conditions that approximate those of the pro theatre. They drill the fundamentals of stage- craft, and offer quiet, solid advanced training. It’s up to the individual neophyte to gain full advantage from this. Many of them do. Such schools, however, are far from numerous. The second class includes schools run by determinedly long-haired poseurs who teach, not acting, but acting theories. The more esoteric and unintelligible these are, the better for the proprietor’s pocketbook—if not for his pupils. Examples of their methods include the famous one of the well-known European director who astounded his first group by shouting at one of the actors, “Now make like a tea-cup!” Or the case of a midwestern lad, caught up in one of these hyper-aesthetical coils, who asked me if I really thought he’d learn to act by following his teacher’s instructions—which were to play a dramatic scene as though he were seaweed at the bottom of the ocean. Exploiting a Theory Wlion we hung up on-the last broker, a series of'mes- njH'r boys began arriving with quarts and even magnums ThG l ai !^ agne — a11 im Ported, and not from Jersey City. hiiVi, ♦ 10 ^elp was routed out to find us crushed ice and c ’, ots - UHforthnateiy, Prohibition had cast such a pall „l Stem in those days that respectable hotels .had, no Th . a ,? ne buckets. So we wound up with fire buckets. „ buckets were filled with ice and the champagne Ir lhcm to C001 * , • and * Sloated over this hoard, chain-smoked and Bnino * i wine to reach the proper chill. We were g to do this right. We even sent for some caviar. reiriPmL e » tot cold bottle is something I still mher. Maney and I were beginning to unwind. We Long exposure to this sort of determinedly self-conscious rigmarole will ruin even the finest talent Those inculcated with the virtue beyond hope of cure can never again rep- resent an author's creation on a stage; they can only rep- resent an actor who is exploiting a theory of acting at the expense of the author’s creation. The result they achieve is never effect, just affectation. The third class includes schools that don’t give the kids any sort of real instruction whatever, but can be classed as gyps only because their so-called faculties are incapable of learning the subjects they claim to teach. They include all the small academies run by one unsuccessful actor or by a small and equally unsuccessful group. A lot of such •schools are operated by people with no professional ex- perience at all. in the fourth class are the out-and-out gyps that don’t . even attempt to teach the student his craft; their only attempt is to separate him from as much money as pos- sible. The methods are manifold and devious—tieups with photographers, with “agents” who charge a “registra- tion fee” plus a few dollars weekly for “publicity,” extra courses at extra fees, payments for permission, to appear in the school’s shows, et cetra ad nauseam. Overall, .the schools don’t present too pretty a picture— except for the proprietors. And to become a proprietor you don’t have to have any knowledge or ability or experi- ence—not even the knack of picking up a few pointers from your pupils as you go along. All you need is enough dough to take a few choicely worded ads in the proper spots, and the kids will come flooding in, unbuckling their money-belts as they approach. A Small Word or Two About Oldtime Advance Agents By NED ARMSTRONG In this age of the super-noun, when a press agent is apt to be called anything from publicity director to pub- lic relations counselor, an honest flack is hard to come by. Even in the legit, where a certain amount of modesty in the front-of-the-house has always been considered cricket, drumbeaters today have evolved two and three- word descriptives, some parts of which run into un- countable syllables. Perhaps this is as good an occasion as could be found to say a small memory-prayer for the old-fashioned, ruddy-faced, talkative, amiable advance agent. Here was a fellow to break into the monotony of the stuffiest edi- tor’s most hidden and recessive cubbyhole. Here was a man who was always welcome because of the memory of his last hilarious visit. This flack, who wore summer clothes in winter and winter clothes in summer, or else always the same outfit, looked and talked like a press agent. In these good old days, the familiar grin, the hearty backslap, the whispered sally was a frank and open part of an act—an act designed to chisel space. There was nothing complicated or subtle about the old- time ballyhoo boy. You knew exactly who he was. More often than not, those parts of his life which most men ordinarily keep hush-hush had long since been openly and candidly discussed with one and all at the corner saloon. Moreover, you liked him because he was a press agent, and, like the robin of spring, a harbinger of a coming pleasantness. Often, in the rapid succession of jokes, rid- dles, puns, charades and assorted wisecracks, an editor might wonder if the stage itself hadn’t missed a great performer in the loss of this fellow to the lonely road of advance man. But one thing was always certain. The world of letters had not suffered. The old-style flack was a flagrant violator of syntax and - grammar-book. This again was a large part of his charm, one of the secrets of his craft, for he merely brought the message to Gar- cia; he made no pretense of assuming the editor’s role in writing it. J Work of Art , j His life on the road was also a work of art in its own magnificent way. Every hotel manager, every railroad passenger agent, and a great many other less-dignified public servants, including more than one with an un- listed phone number, knew him, could recognize his hol- low, barking voice from the first croaked syllable. Bell- boys knew him, for he was the man who always carried his own luggage to his room; in fact, had anyone else dared pick up the suitcase it would probably have fal- len apart in a shambles. He was a great talker, but his talk was of a kind seldom heard today. He talked about everything under the sun, and yet seldom seemed to say anything. There is a great possibility that if the sum total of an oldtime advance man’s life conversation could be reduced and purified for content, the result would be hard to find. He didn’t pretend to know it all, he seldom had a theory about anything; he had, apparently nothing to sell f for his line and his slant were as innocent—on the surface—as the prattle of a two-year-old. But that was the key to his greatness. He did have a slant, he did have a line, he did have a message, and it was invariably projected in terms of big advance stories in the local newspapers under the bylines of the best-read columnists. And, always, as their own information, their own discovery, their own theory. For the true old-style road agent was a man of sensational personal immodesty who nevertheless performed the miracle of anonymity. What got into the newspapers was just about what he wanted in those papers, and it was always about the client, and never, or seldom, about himself. Being in show business, he was a showy fellow, and this he be- lieved to be part of his essential identification, but like any good performer he saw to it that the show came first, and always foremost. As a man who knew almost everyone everywhere he was a lonely duck, a sort of recluse, a traveling hermit. Often, too, he was eccentric in many profound ways: ex- cessively frugal, half-starved, unlaundered, pencil-less, yet constantly pitching. Not a Phony | But he was not a phony. He was as real as the Jack of Hearts. He didn’t offer friendship with one hand and pull the rug with the other. He didn’t offer friendship period. Mostly there was an attitude of great cynicism and disbelief buried in the Core of the verbose landslide of chatter which emanated from his ever-smiling lips. He hated a square, he rejected all dolts who were suckers enough to believe in anything (except himself, of course!). Newspapermen adored him. He arrived with the can- dor of a police call. He had a frank espousal of cause as familiar to the trained editor as the husband-killing wife’s first lament: “I loved the guy.” There was nothing to do about him. There was no place to hide. No amount of premeditated plan for rejection wotild work. On his prior visit the editor might have sworn to himself: Never Again. Last time that bloke came here on a simple, casual call, the Daily Blat wound up devoting part of page 1, half of page 3, and the Sunday Magazine to Tillie Knertz, the Tiresome Terpsichore. But there he would be, unashamed and beguiling, hat firmly planted on head, toothpick in corner of mouth, munching an apple, lean- ing on the desk, and yakitiyaking until, in absolute self- defense, the editor would seize pencil and paper and scribble; “Here we go again. Joe McIntyre says Sylvia Simpers* chest measurement is half the circumference of the Rose 3ow I.” Nobody believed him, which was part of his essential charm. He was honest. Newspapers are in the circula- tion business, and a good story and circulation are synonymous. Actually, the oldtime, untitled, unassociated and unas- sisted advance man is (for there are still a few worthies about) one of the great figures of the legitimate theatre. Although he seldom saw a performance of the show he was advancing (more Often than not he preferred not to) he blazed a glowing trail from coast-to-coast which be- comes less luminous as our old-style torchbearers become less numerous. i