Variety (December 1953)

54 LEMllMATR Wcdfaelday, Decembei* 30,1^ ^ Lee li * l'*?‘ Cpotintied from pagVl ©S and* attorney WMr. ; Ho weve r/ not even those relatively close to the situation have any real knowledge on that* phase of it. In Control Althbtigh authority Was nomin- ally shared by Lee and J. J. Shu- bert (productions were always billed as presented by the “Messrs?. Shubert,” for example), Lee was actually in control of most opera- tions. He made decisions regard- ing the extensive theatre holdings in New York, including not only bookings and the numerous mat- ters that involved, such as invest- ments of various kinds, ticket price and distribution policies,, etc.,-but also the basic questions of buying, celling and leasing properties. In addition, Lee had an active voice in the firm’s road; operations, including booking of tours, through its participation in both the United Booking Office and the Theatre Guiid-American Theatre Society. He also had a say in the operation of Shubert-controlled theatres; in various cities, nominally a J. J. prerogative. All these key activi- ties, ana such Shubert subsidiaries as its music publishing company, scenic studio, costume house and investments in various other legit ventures made Lee Shubert the most powerful figure in the cori- temoorary theatre, at least in the u,.s. ■ ..*_• ' Shubert died last Friday afters noon, Christmas Day, in Mt. Sinai Hospital, N. # Y., of a cerebral hem- orrhage. He had been taken to the hospital Dec. 21 with a circulatory ailment, but had obviously been in failing health for the last several months. Funeral services were held Monday (28) afternoon at Temple Emantu-El, N. Y., with many well- known theatrical figures present, and burial in Salem Fields Ceme- tery, Brooklyn.: Shubert, who was known as "Mr: Lee” to subordinates . and most associates, gave his birthdate as March 15,1875, in “Who’s Who,” but his actual age was believed to have been about 82 or 83. With his brothers, Sam S. and J. J., he en- tered the theatrical business in Syracuse, a fact that .was jokingly recalled many years when George Abbott produced a Rodgers & Hart musical titled “The Boys From Syracuse.” It was pointed out at the time that, the show was adapt- ed from Shakespeare’s “Comedy of Errors.” The Shuberts, still in their teens. Invaded New York about the turn of the century. They quickly chal- lenged the dominance of the thea- tre monopoly of Marc Klaw & Abe Erlanger, then known as “The Syn- dicate,” and after sporadic skir- mishing, became involved, in a feud that continued until 1922. when the Shuberts emerged with con- trol. Similar Suit ^ The waiTing factions formed the UnitecFBooking Office, which still does virtually all booking of tour- ing shows. Ironically, the Shuberts, who. bucked and broke the Klaw & Erlanger monopoly, were them- selves sued, .with, the UBO as co- defendant, on similar charges by the Government in 1950. The ac- tion is still awaiting trial. Sam Shubert,. the oldest, was killed in a train wreck in 1906, and his picture now hangs in the lobby of every Shubert-operated thea- tre. With Sam’s death, Lee took over leadership of the Shubert in- terests. Presumably in fear of an- other 1 accident in which they might both be victims, Lee and J. J. never traveled together, and on the few occasions when they at- tended the same show, always sat in widely , separated parts of the theatre. Although they continued as busi- ness partners, the surviving brothr ers were not cn friendly terms. The cause of the quarrel was never revealed, but for many years Lee and J. J. were said to have spoken bnly rarely. On the infrequent oc- casions they communicated, it was through subordinates. Lee’s office was in the tower atop the Shubert Theatre, N. Y., while J. J. s was in the 'Shubert- owned Sardi Bldg., directly across 44th St, Their cars were always parked in Shubert Alley, Lee's usually remaining until late at night, while he stayed in his office to receive reports of the evening’s boxoffice receipts at Shubert thea- tres, .as well as to discuss business matters. Shubert’s only real interest was ‘ Detroit. the theatre. T/nlikethe Igte Sam , who was regarded, as a promising producer, he was primarily con- cerned with the financial: en$ the business, particularly the ac : qui$itio.n and operatipn of real estate. /V ,,n ' ' J. Ur, on ^he _ other hand; - warior- merly active in the production of such operetta moneymakers as “Blossom Time,” “Student Prince,” etc. However, with the decline in popularity of operettas in recent years, the Shuberts have done lit- tle producing, but have confined most of their activity in that field to financial participation in the: shows of other managements. Shubert Feuds Shubert’s feuds, generally with at least the tacit support ; of his brother, had a notable record, even for. Broadway, where feuds are commonplace. Oyer the years he battled with the newspapers (a suit relating to advertising rates is currently awaiting trial), the critics (the late. Alexander W6611- cott, Walter Winchell), columnists (Leonard Lyons), unions (notably Actors Equity), organizations (Pro- ducing Managers Assn.) and other managements (the late Florenz Ziegfeld, Theatre Guild). The Shu- berts’ feud with Variety has also been notated within and .without the trade. But Shubert rarely allowed per- sonal animosities to interfere with business. Thus, he repeatedly, made deals with individuals and firms with whom he had bitterly quarreled. His outstanding quali- ties, as a theatrical operator were his daring, shrewdness, secretive- ness and tenaciousness. Always a reticent man, Shubert had few intimate friends, although he was on amicable terms with a number of veterans ok the mana- gerial field. He disliked personal publicity, distrusted the press and avoided newspaper men. It’s no- table, .therefore, that since his death, not a single reminiscent col- umn or article about him has ap- peared in the New York dailies^ One editorial, in the N. Y. Herald Tribune, summed up, his passing with the comment that his “real story” is still to be written. (Colum- nist Ed Sullivan- at one time au- thored an “authorized” biography but it has yet to be published. A "profile” in The New Yorker, by A. J, Lebling, some years ago sur- prised by being “too polite,” es- pecially for that weekly). Only in connection with his nu- merous business feuds and divorce, in 1948, by former. showgirl Mar- cella Swanson, whom he remarried a year later* was Shubert the ob- ject of much personal publicity. In the case of his marriage, which the divorce papers declared took place in Berlin in the mid-1930s, before the German capital and all official records were destroyed, Shubert refused to discuss it with reporters, saying that this was a “purely personal matter.” Inciden- tally, Shubert’s nephew, Lawrence Shubert Lawrence, manager of the Shubert theatres in Philadelphia, is married to Beatrice Swanson, a sister of his uncle’s widow. They were showgirls together in Shubert operettas. The Shubert theatrical holdings? which were said to be valued at $400,000,000 in the late ’20s, were badly hit by the depression. After going through receivership, Shu- bert reacquired for $400,000 most of the properties, which are now held by such subsidiary companies as Select Theatres, Trebuhs Realty, etc. Included are theatres in N.Y. Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, etc.’, as well a* apartments, hotels and other realty, all estimated to be worth around $300,000,000. (Tre- buhs is Shubert backwards). Owned and/or operated N.Y. ! houses include the Shubert, BrOad- nurst, Majestic,. St. James, Booth, Plymouth, Rpyale, Golden, Im- perial, Belasco, National, Broad- way, Winter Garden, Barrymore, Century, Longacre and Cort, all fe- giters, plus several leased for radio or television studios. Shubert the- atres out of town include the Shu- bert, Majestic, Colonial (jUst ac- quired), Wilbur, Plymouth and Opera House, Boston; Shubert. Forrest, Walnut St. and Locust bt., Philadelphia; Shubert, Greet Northern, Blackstone, Harris, Sel- . an ^ Studebaker, Chicago; i Shubert, Washington, and Shubert, ' Chicago, Dec. 29; . Reported , split between Jules Pfeiffer and Danny Goldberg, co- producers of the touring “Good NIte Ladies” could hot be con- firmed at press tiihe yesterday (Tues.)r Breakup—is /believed \ to have been' the outgrowth of dif- ferences between the two men in the handling of various union mat- ters, with Pfeiffer reportedly buy- ing out Goldberg. . Problems ' with various legit unions came to a head Saturday (26), when the show opened at the Great Northern Theatre here. Stagehands' union registered 1 a beef regarding the absence of a regular road, company crew. Series of meets Monday (28) resulted in the hiring of three men to supple- ment the regular house crew, ‘ Lack of a company manager and a pressagqnt also resulted in a hassle with the Assn, of Theatrical Press Agents & Managers; In line with the ATPAM beef, Pfeiffer ap- plied for membership in the Union, with the pitch that if he’s accepted he’ll act as company manager and will put on a union man to handle the flacking. ATPAM is consider- ing the proposal. Show’s low budget, estimated at around $4,000-$5,000 weekly, has been the subject of a series of beefs from Actors .Equity,. ATPAM and IATSE during the course of its whistlestop tour, under the spoils sorship of Pfeiffer and Goldberg. C. W. Christenberry Jr., produc- er-director of “Our Town'' on the Coast recently, is trying to raise $40,000 capital to bring the revival to Broadway . . . Authors’ agent Claire Leonard is now offering script criticism by director James Light, on a small fee basis, to play- wrights ... . Annamary Dickey has taken over the femme lead in “King and I,” succeeding Constance Carpenter, who withdrew on her doctor’s orders . . . Company man- ager Joe Roth and Gabriel Katzka, formerly a production assistant for Paula Stone & Mike Sioane, have formed a partnership to produce Broadway shows. Burl Ives, will. star in “Black Candle” V. , ■'‘Bullfight,’’ by Leslie Stevens, will open Jan. 12 at the Theatre de Lys, Greenwich Village, N. Y. » .... Alice Pearce joins: the cast of “John Murray Anderson’s Almanac” tonight (Wed.), succeed- ing Kay Medford, who has with- drawn to go into the incoming “Lullaby” . . ". Macdonald Carey will star in “Anniversary Waltz” ... Gala Ebin ha& gone to the Coast to confer with Vernon Duke, Jerry Lawrence and Robert E. Lee on the script of “Dilly,” their musical adaptation of Theodore Pratt’s novel, “Miss Dilly Says No,’’ which she will produce next season . . .. Katherine Benedict, a model and sister of actress Regina Benedict, lost both cfeet in a train accident in Boston, Dec. 18. Donald Buka returned to the U.S. yesterday (Tues.) after six months in Europe, during which time he made three TV films in Rome for John Mantley. and Andre Luotto... S. M. Handelsman, re- cently appointed managing director of the Philadelphia Playhouse-in- the-Park, planed to the Coast Mon- day (28) to line up stars for the tent operation, which begins a 13- play series early in June,. .Donald Cook will star in “The Moon Is Blue” at the Capitol Theatre, St. Petersburg, week of Jan. 11 and not Donald Woods, as erratumed. Sally Wilensky made production assistant on “Girl In Pink Tights” . . . Jeanmaire, of same show, to be one of the two interviewees on Ed Murrow’s CBS-TV “Person To Person” show. Friday night (.1) . . . Dodie Smith's own adaptation of her bestseller,. “I Capture the Castle,” is set for King’s Theatre, Glasgow, Jan. 25, with Virginia Mc- Kenna and George Relph starring. Producer Leland Hayward planed to Europe over the weekend for a vacation, and plans to see the shows in London and Paris.. .Judy Holli- day may take, over as star of “Won- derful Town” when Rosalind Rus- sell leaves the show at end of this season. New adaptation of Moliere’s “Doctor in Spite of Himself,” by Kathleen Cooper and Gaylord Marf, opens Friday (1) at the Gal- lery Theatre, Hollywood, with Marr directing. 4 ** ** *“ »* * 1, » 4 It « » J » » 4 > * ' I 1. Rodgers 8c/Hammerstein, already the producers of “King,end I” and “Seven Year Itch” fit London'and “Soiith. Pacific” on-tout) in. England have arranged to present “Teahouse off the August Moon” there in association with Maurice Evans and George Schaefer. They also plan to do “Kismet” in the West End, presumably at the. Drury Lane, fol- lowing the current run of “King and I.” This may mean that H & r don’t figure t>n a West End production of their current Broadway hit “Me and. Juliet.” Plan whereby legit producers might recover a substantial part of their production costs4before a play is presented on Broadway is being talked up by Box Office Television, Inc., promoters of theatre .TV events. Under a formula devised by Edgar Rosenberg, former NBC producer now allied with BOTV, the closed-circuit company is seeking to present Broadway plays on a national film theatre, hookup before their preems on the Main Stem. Thinking behind thfe plan is that if film, theatres offer a substantial guarantee for" the legit attractions, a producer might v secure a sub- stantial return before the play is subjected to the scrutiny-ofrth© New York critics, Rosenberg, who has already sounded out many of the unions involved, has also talked with various legit producers. ... ’Opinion is apparently divided. Some, argue that a Broadway stage play has little to sell until the New York opening has branded it a hit. On the other hartd legit interests are not writing the plan off as impossible. Any scheme that would open new revenues is just too beguiling. m \ •• * - • ... Playbill for the recent tryout engagement of “Remarkable Mr. Pen- nypacker,” at the Parsons, Hartford, carried a program note describing the show as “the first cornet to be launched by a new and wonderful play producing galexy (sic)—Producers Theatre, Inc. It continued with * individual capsule biogs of the three directors, realtor Robert W. Dowling; fealtor-producer Roger* L. Steverts and producer Robert Whitehead. It concluded, “It is evident from the foregoing that the American theatre’s future depends on these three men. We feel hoh- ored that they have; chosen the city of Hartford as the site of the world premiere of their first production.” Unquote. “John Murray Anderson’s Almanac,” financed at $200,000 by pro- ducei's Michael Grace, Stanley Gilkey and Harry Rigby,- reportedly cost about $260,000 to bring in, with out-of-town tryout losses primarily responsible fpr the overage. All the extra coin,.as well as a major, portion of the , regular capital, is understood to have, been ‘ supplied by Grace, a member; of the steamship family, and his near-relatives. At a potential capacity .of slightly over $50,000, the revue c©n make about $10,000-$11,000 operating profit a week. Is the new Christmas sedson trend ifi Britain more towards bright revue than traditional pantomime? Experiment at the Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, suggests that an injection Of new-Style entertainment may have, far-reaching results. Stewart. Cruikshank, head of Howard & Wyndham, spent over $75,000 on ^Starlight for. You/' production team- ing Geraldo’s Orch With Chaz Chase, Alan & Blanche Lund, Frances Day, Jack Radcllffe, etc. Show, with dance band on stage in second stanza, won the normally staid Playgoers at the Lyceum, many of whom lieyer see leading vaude acts, and is likely to be repeated at other British centers next Christmas. '■ Plans are being mulled to stage the revue in London’s West End. International lineup of principals, plus novel staging by megger Heath Joyce, appealed to theatregoers. In answer to question in last week’s (23) Legit Bits, “Whatever be- came, of Yolanda Mero-irion, who headed the New Opera Co.?,”, as executive director of the Musicians Emergency Fund for the past 20 years, Mrs, Irion is reported very much alive and kicking. She, Mrs. Lytle Hull and Fritz Kreisler (president and chairman respectively of the MEF), created over $4,000,000 worth of employment for musicians and arranged for over 150,000 free music lessons for veterans through a MEF subsidiary, the Hospitalized.Veterans Music Service. Another division (the. Artists Veterans Hospital Programs), Under the guidance of Jean Tennyson, has booked practically every name artist-rJascha Heifetz, Benny Goodman, Lily Pons, etc.—into VA Hospitals across the country. Plans are' now buzzing for a New Opera production as well as next year’s activities for the MEF. A brochure of special interest to show- biz readers has just been issued by the Copyright Office of the Library of Congress. The 91- page booklet, selling for $1, comprises Vol.; 7, Parts 3-4, No. 1 of the Third Series in the Catalog of Copyright Entries, and it is entitled . “Dramas and Works Prepared for Oral ..Delivery, January-June, 1953.” Behind this dry-as-dust label is a complete list of “dramatic” material submitted for copyright in the specified period. Not only, plays are included, but also recordings, commercial films, broadcasting scripts, librettos and public addresses. Each entry is indexed by title, author and copyright owner. While most of the current Broadway legit attractions are cataloged, it is interesting to note unfamiliar titles credited to topflight authors. For example, Robert Emmet Sherwood, last April 21, Yegisterqd a 3-act play entitled “The Trial of Pontius Pilate.” John Golden and John Crosby ajgp revealed as May 28 entries with “Pickled Peppers; or, Old Octopus,” described as “a new comedy in 3 acts.” Harry Wagstaff Gribble and Lawrence J. Bolton, May 15, deposited for copyright a 3-act melodrama called “Rest, My Loves.” Guy Reginald Bolton, Feb. 20, protected revisions of a 3-act play, "Angel in Paris.,” previously registered in 1933 as. “Angel,” derived from a Melchior Lengyei story. Ruth McKenney’s book, “The Loud Red Patrick,” was copyrighted as a 3-act play by John Perry Boruff, Feb. 20; while James Hilton, Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, on June 12* registered “Shangri- La,” book and lyrjes for a 2-act musical based on Hilton’s novel, “Lost Horizon.” Joseph (“Arsenic and Old Lace”) Kesselring, May 11, registered a 3-act play called “Surgery Is Indicated”; while on Jan. 26, John Howard Lawson copyrighted a 3-aeter entitled "Thunder Morning.” Horton Foote entered “The Rocking Chair,” a 2-acter, Feb. 27. Arnold Moss, tha actor, and Stella Moss, submitted the text for ‘Story of a Soldier,” a dramatization “to be read, played and danced in concert form to the music of Igor Stravinsky’s ‘Historie du Soldat,’ ” translated and adapted by the Mosses from the French of C. F. Ramuz (April 7). Another player, Velnia Roy ton, collaborating with Don Lochner, on June 8 protected a 3-act play, “Many Bridges,” Howard Richardson and Frances Goforth, May 6, entered a 3-act dramatization of Erskine Caldwell’s novel, “God’s Little Acre”; while Lynn Riggs deposited the.text of a 2-act musical, “Some Sweet Day,” Feb. 19. Sophie Treadwell, whose play “Machinal” had Clark Gable in its cast in 1928, registered a 3-act script entitled “The Siren” on Jan. 13. Among playwrights whose works are largely, performed by amateurs, - Wilbur Braun leads the entries with seven titles, published by Samuel French and by the Walter H. Baker Co. In the “way-off-Broadway” division, Neil and Caroline Shaffner, Iowa teht-shoW impresarios, have protected their original. 3-acter called “Natalie Needs a Nightie.” Easily the most fascinating title registered with/the. Copyright Office in '53 is “I. Dreamed I Went to the Playtex Ballet in My Maidenform Bra.” This Is described as “a divertissement,” with.idea and libretto by Elizabeth Guest Berryhill, music by Gordon Connell, and choreog- raphy by Jeannde Taylor Herst. Ballet skips into the catalog with David Lichine’s protection of “Graduation Ball,” one-act, in French, entered May 6. Mark Twain (Samuel^Langhorne Clemens) is the source for a number . . (Continued on page 60)