Variety (March 1956)

Wednesday, March 21, 1956 misceixaxv P'Attm'TY B. 0. Melts as Blizzard Howls; Some Strong Fix Survive Snow Theatre business in the New+- York area was off 25 c o to 50, o for the most part and in some in¬ stances it was virtually nil. I he storm was a boon to the matinee trade, according to a few circuit execs, but the night was murder. The “early show" ticket sales were helped by school holidays both Monday and yesterday. The old saw about good pictures doing good business was apropos in certain locations. The Skouros circuit had total net receipts on Monday equal to the level of the same day of last week. The chain had a couple of strong boxoffice films in various of its units and ‘these compensated for the lack of activity elsewhere. Circuit head Charles Moss re¬ ported: “Saturday night was strong, Sunday below normal and Mon¬ day nothing.” Shea Amusement opened a new drive-in theatre in Jamestown, N.Y., last Thursday but the run was a short one. House was unable to operate Friday and Saturday because of the snow and reopened ®n Sunday. Suffolk County was the most severely hit. Prudential Thea¬ tres’ four ozoner houses on Long Island were snowed out over the weekend. Conventional houses in thd -area suffered a business paralysis. One nabe hardtop house in Bronxville was forced to shut¬ ter Monday night. All Loew’s and RKO houses con¬ tinued functioning but the b.o. in sopie outlets made it appear hardly worthwhile Monday night. Skouras’ Squire Theatre. Great Neck, remained open all through Sunday night to shelter a couple of hundred travelers who were stranded. New Haven Film Parlors Count Patrons by Dozens; Stations’ Storm Priority Caesar’s ‘Whiteout’ New York’s big snow on the eve of springtime’s debut cued some last-minute radio-tv program changes. A major victim was “Caesar’s Hour” on NBC-TV Mon¬ day (19), with Sid Caesar unable to get out from under at his King’s Point, L.I., home, and ditto Carl Reiner in Westchester. Kinescope of Dec. 26 was subbed and at show’s end the announcer said Caesar and troupe would be back next week, “weather permitting." Some radio programs had to throw in recordings or taped stanzas as the near-blizzard threw a block around performers. Shriner Shovels CBS producer-writer Kep Eng- lund and comedian Herb Shriner arrived last Saturday (17) from Florida and found that the East 37th St. airline terminal in New York (1) had about eight Carey busloads, all converged by planes from LaGuardia and Idlewild; (2), the restrooms (for some strange reason) locked-out; (3), no trans¬ portation otherwise from the air¬ lines building. After trying for three hours, both finally hired a limousine, but when Shriner got to his Larchmont (N. Y.) home the hired livery became snowbound and the comedian had to take to the shovel, along with the chauf¬ feur, to get the car started on its return trip. VAN &SCHENCK UP AS POSSIBLE BIOPIC Chicago, March 20. Gus Van, vaude star of the team of Van & Schenck, conferred with Essaness Theatres Corp. head Ed¬ die Silverman here last week re¬ garding filmization of the Van & Schenck life story. Silverman has bought rights to the biopic from Nat Goldstone. The Essaness topper recently made his production bow with “The Phenix City Story,” dis¬ tributed by Allied Artists. No definite plans for the film New Haven, March 20. Clipped by the worst storm in a decade, New Haven and vicinity found itself virtually paralyzed today (Tues.). Business stood still as retail stores, offices and fac¬ tories remained shuttered. Show biz took its share of the j beating, with three downtown film j have been formulated as yet and houses playing to almost a vacuum, resale of the rights has not been t (Qnox rule( j out as a possibility. Loew’s-Poli <3.025 seats) clocked 200 patrons at matinee and 250 | evening. Paramount (2.300) hit 100 mat and 95 at night. Roger Sherman (2,200) pulled about 250 each at mat and night. Shubert, with premiere of “Strip for Action” close to an advance sellout, played despite the storm but wound up with approximately half a house. Management gave missing stubholders rainchecks for Wednesday matinee. On the radio-tv front, WNHC called in full staff to handle extra load of servicing announcements concerning 169 towns in Connecti¬ cut, as well as communities in Long Island and Southern Massachusetts. WAVZ tabulated close to 1,000 (Continued on page 16) 350 Cancel Lewis Opener Philadelphia, March 20. Joe E. Lewis was off to 350 cancellations at the Latin Cas¬ ino because of the snow blan¬ ket. Lewis is invariably a sell¬ out opening nights here. Storm also shuttered Chubby’s, Jer¬ sey spot, postponing A1 Hib- bler opening to Wednesday. Film houses were down to a trickle, more ushers than pa¬ trons, only 20 customers inside one Chestnut St. firstrun- at a certain hour. Snowfall Sloughs Seaboard Cafes The snowfall over the weekend disrupted the cafe biz throughout the entire eastern seaboard. Ni- teries were either forced to close because of inaccessibility, or could not get headliners to arrive in time for shows. Spots that weren’t faced with the difficulty regarding trans¬ portation of headliners, were hit by the fact that biz was way off. Friday (16) was ruined because of the heavy snowfall. Biz returned to near normalcy on Saturday and even the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in New York couldn’t bring the trade up to par. However, Sunday, when the snowfall resumed, biz dropped down to near zero. Cafes outside of New York were hit very badly. For example, Blin- strub’s, Boston, was supposed to open with . Julius LaRosa Monday (19), but the spot shuttered for the preem and wasn’t slated to open last night (Tues.) It’s expected to reopen (Wed.). Cab Calloway was to have opened at El Morocco, Montreal, Monday, but couldn’t get there be¬ cause of disrupted plane service. A1 Hibbler similarly couldn’t get down to Chubby’s, Collingswood, N. J., for his Monday night preem. Lillian Roth barely got into Wash¬ ington for her Monday opening at the Windsor Park Hotel. The agencies had to work prac¬ tically overtime in order to try to move talent in time for dates. In some instances, they tried to get the cafes to close for the evening, especially on Monday. The per¬ centers argued that, aside from be¬ ing a dull night, it would be dis¬ astrous to open a new show to an empty house. However, bulk of the bonifaces declared that it was dan¬ gerous to close even for a night, since it might be construed that the shuttered condition was per¬ manent. Fred Allen—Writer At Heart ji By ABEL GREEN As a onetime Variety columnist, Fred Allen’s show biz career took on a little more intimacy in the annals of this chronicle. For one thing, it still lingers, even after Allen clicked on the bigtime and musical comedy—this was long be¬ fore radio—that he would still have preferred founder Sime Silverman giving him a job as a weekly show PSriety Subscription Order Form Enclosed find check for $ Please send VARIETY for 3/21 To .. Street City. ,, CPlease Print N»m») Zone.... State. Regular Subscription Rates One Year—-$10.00 Two Years—$18.00 Canada and Foreign—$1 Additional Per Year y^RIETY Inc. 154 West 46tlp Street New York 36. N. Y. Fred Allen s ‘New Act’ Reviews First “notice" on Fred Allen in the Jan. 4, 1918 issue, by Sime took severely to task the “nut” comedian who billed himself as “a talking juggler” at Proctor’s 5th Ave. Theatre (N. Y.) for his alleged “borrowings” of stuff from Felix Adler, Joe Cook and Edwin George, vaudeville contemporaries of the time. Despite the critical captiousness, there was suggestion of Allen’s skill as a monologist, and a later review by Sime urged him to throw away the clubs and just do comedy. Three years later, the late Jack Pulaski (Ibee) caught Allen at Colonial, N. Y., and in the June 10,' 1921 issue observed, “Allen is a nut comedian ... All his ‘borrowed’ (show biz argot of the period for lifted material) stuff has gone . . . With whitened face Allen is now more ‘legitimately’ a comic of the nut school . . . He could not resist the use of a card . . . reading ‘Mr. Allen is deaf. If you care to laugh or applaud, please do so loudly’ . . . Reappearing with a guitar, he said that he was a Hawaiian. Once he ‘was very dark, but .someone left a pair of dice in the house and I faded, faded, faded’ . . . Allen’s present act is big time and it looks all his own.” An anonymous Variety reviewer caught Fred Allen & Co. (2) at Keith’s 81st St., N. Y., where apparently he was once again breaking-in a new Ret, this one titled “Disappointments of 1927.” Review read in part, “Allen starts as a prolog singer, announcing he has everything from Paul Whiteman’s band to a mob of vulup- tuous chorus girls with him. Phone calls inform him that none of his company can appear. Portland Hoffa [Mrs. Allen] then walks on, saying she wants, to work with Allen and be disgraced. Dialog follows, with’ Allen pulling a strong list of laughgetters . . . wherein he imitates a ventriloquist and then exposes himself. He plays a clarinet and finishes with a banjo number after first lec¬ turing the audience on the merits of applause. It’s difficult to describe the turn, so varied is its material. The idea is that it’s good comedy and vaudeville needs it.” v (Apparently so did all of show business since then. — Ed.) Fred Allen Parlayed His Deadpan Wit Into International Renown biz columnist or contributor than knocking himself out as an actor. Allen’s penchant for writing later was to become part of the Ameri¬ can scene, projected into wider ap¬ peal because of hi§ basic talent as humorist who could write his own material than as a wit who just wrote period. Nonetheless, his “Near Fun” periodic columns were much to his personal preference. Or so he thought. Reproduced herewith is an early Variety review of Allen (nee John Florence Sullivan), the juggler whose small talk was considerably better than his best brand of what he thought was Indian club and kindred dexterity, Allen, the jug¬ gler, was variously known as “Fred St. James,” ‘Treddie James, world’s worst juggler,” and “Paul Huckle, European entertainer,” but when he decided to go the whole hog as a comedian, sans clubs, cigarboxes and bouncing balls that defied Newton’s law, he became Fred Allen. The surname was in honor of his then agent, the late Edgar Allen, later to become chief booker for the William Fox Vaude¬ ville Circuit. It was also as a sub¬ terfuge, when booked at Fox’s City (now the Skouras’ Academy of Mu¬ sic) on 14th St., not to woo Keith' ire for playing the “opposition.” The Whispering Nasal Twang He was still juggling on the Pantages time in 1919 but when he essayed a Sunday night “concert” at the Winter Garden on Broad¬ way, in 1922, his nasal twang couldn’t be heard beyond the fifth row. The holiday audience started clapping in rhythm. While not of the genre of the notorious ancl dreaded-in-show busines<£ “Colonial (Continued on page 6W tonight I More Olivier Peeve On NBC Cleanup of ‘Richard’ Washington, March 20. Laurence Olivier, who told* the Tex and Jinx radio show in New York why he didn’t like his Richard III” film on color tv, got off Part II of his critique here. In an interview with Richard L. Coe, reviewer for the Washingxton Post and Time-Herald, Olivier pointed out that the long shots and close shots and largely lost on the small video screen. ‘Furthermore,” he is quoted, “much of the blood and gore that’s an integral part of ‘Richard’ was cut for the benefit, I’m told, of children, the omissions of the lit¬ tle princes’ deaths, the shot of Hastings’ severed head, the bloody rag in the doorway, the look be¬ tween Jane Shore and Hastings at King Edward’s deathbed, the final writhings of Richard and the com¬ plete omission of the ghost scene, removed the meat from the play. “The telecasters were overly sensitive about what children can take. Why, they see more gory pictures than that in the comics and other tv shows every day. Fur¬ thermore, violence is part of their inner ^emotions. There’s nothing unhealthy about it. “Then there-were the advertis¬ ing intervals. I wasn’t sure whether we were watching a movie about automobiles, or Shakespeare’s play. I’d been afraid of this, but the fact turned out worse than my fears. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m not against television. But it should have productions create^ for it, not another medium. And I fully understand about advertising, but why must it be so overwhelming? Why so much?” By ROBERT J. LANDRY Fred Allen, who succumbed tq a heart attack on a New York street over the weekend, was a figure with few parallels :n 20th Century showbiz. He was a smalltime vaudeville juggler who developed an intellectual patter, a man who improvised the kind of quips most other comics brain-picked from their scribes. Allen used writers, too, in his radio days but he was always the head writer, much in the way Goodman Ace has oper¬ ated. Like Ace, Allen had occasion to wonder why some less-original comedians rose to greater popular¬ ity ratings and earnings, though— again the comparison—both did very well indeed financially. • Allen’s sometimes mordant and always sardonic slant on life was apparent even while he was still doing a single, hitting all the split- weeks. As an early “tfew Act” no¬ tice by this paper’s founder, Sime Silverman, remarked at the time Allen started with a hodgepodge turn, a dumb act with interspersed cracks. Actually this was the de¬ veloping trend in show business and many an acrobat was to dis¬ card his tights and work .in streeties in front, of the olio. Will Rogers, who came east as a trick roper and used full cowboy re¬ galia plus a horse in his original turn, points up the same course to¬ ward comedy emphasis which Allen followed. Ditto W. C. Fields, an¬ other ex-juggler. Even as? a very young performer (Continued on page 55) A Suzan Ball Memorial Fund, named for the yoUng film actress who was fatally stricked last year, has been established and will op¬ erate under the auspices of the City of Hope Medical Center. Dick Powell and June Allyson have been named national co-chairmen of the fund. They head a list of show biz and civic personalities sponsoring the fund. Others include Jeff Chandler, Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh, Sam¬ my Davis Jr., Rock Hudlson, Gov. William Stratton, Art Linkletter, Dinah Shore, Gov. G. Mennen Wil¬ liams, Jane Powell, Louella Par¬ sons and Scott Brady. The fund will be dedicated to in¬ creasing facilities for a cajficer cen¬ ter. A national drive for funds will be launched shortly, with a goal of $1,000,000 being set for 1956. The fund will be a perma¬ nent organization. • ' * No Biz Like Shaw Biz; Shavian,Wit Is Or Was Bustin’ Out All Over This is the G. B. ShaW season on Broadway and Television. Every generation the anti-GBS’ers put the Irish dramatist on the funeral pyre and every generation he comes back to confound even his warmest champions. “My Fair Lady,” which opened last week as the musical version of Shaw’s “Pygmalion,” is such a smash that it will have become the playwright’s “longest runner” of all time. NBC-TV’s “Producers Showcase” star-studded edition of “Caesar ahd Cleopatra” didn’t shake the ratings a couple of -weeks back but drew coast-to-cnast attention per se. ABC TV “sneaked in” ahead of that with a repeat of the *C&C” celluloid oldie in two parts. Next fall Maurice Evans stars on Broadway in Shaw’s “The Apple Cart.” Off-Broadway, GBS is repped with “The Admirable BashviUe.” In short, don’t count the old boy out. He r may ,be good foE another century^' • i '- ' * ' ’