Opera for Chicago

Chicago's drab old Auditorium, which made opera news long before Samuel Insull ever thought of building his handsome Civic Opera House up on the river bank, last week made news twice. Mr. Insull's theatre was as dark as a haunted house, gave every promise of remaining so. But the Auditorium was fully lighted and will be for some time to come. Fortune Gallo's 20-year-old San Carlo Opera Company ("Dollar Opera") began an indefinite engagement there, in its first week had record sellouts for five nights running (18,325 paid admissions, and an estimated 5,000 turned away). The other news concerned another opera company, freshly formed, which will be ready to step in when the San Carlo departs. The new opera company is the project of Herbert Morris Johnson, whose first connection with opera came through Harold Fowler McCormick whose International Harvester books he audited. Twenty years ago Harold McCormick and his wife (the late Edith Rockefeller McCormick) were bearing the financial brunt of Chicago's opera performances. The deficits were enormous, the affairs badly tangled. Mr. McCormick thought that practical, hard-working Herbert Johnson might help straighten things out. Professionally unacquainted with music and musicians, a Lockport, Ill. native with only routine office experience, Herbert Johnson soon got a taste for prima-donna intrigues and backstage excitement. He had worked up to become vice president and business manager of Insull's Civic Opera Company when disaster struck it. Last winter, lost without opera's confusion and glamour, he started making plans. There were two big questions: How much guarantee money could be raised (he wanted $100,000)? How much admission should be charged? Last week, with both questions answered, Mr. Johnson made public his ideas for the Chicago Grand Opera Company. He had a conductor, prices, preliminary plans. There was only one possible hitch: would San Carlo, whose Auditorium contract lasts as long as weekly receipts run above a "certain figure" (not divulged), be ready to leave by Nov. 20 when Mr. Johnson hoped to move in? Mr. Johnson would have his Grand Opera run for ten weeks. On the dais will be a slim little man who is no stranger to Chicago opera--Gennaro Papi, who had 13 summers at Ravinia (and 14 winters at the Metropolitan). Well aware of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's popularity, Mr. Johnson decided against having performances Thursday or Friday, traditionally Orchestra dates. But there will be a Saturday matinee. Seats will range from 50-c- to $3; season tickets from $4.75 to $27.50. By last week $75,000 had been guaranteed and more seemed imminent. "Opera of the finest kind Chicago has known . . ." said Impresario Johnson. ''We are very happy. . . ."

Air Season

In the early autumn Radio plans its winter programs, gets fresh advertising accounts, introduces new talent, decides which of the old has outlived its popularity. Last week after long dickering another air season was fairly well lined up. Again Radio, which has made strange bedfellows before, had brought about marvelous combinations of performers and products. Prize combination for this season is a famed oldtime children's laxative, brown and syrupy, and the foremost U. S. violinist, artistic to his fingertips. The violinist is Albert Spalding, the laxative Fletcher's Castoria. These two got together because two years ago Castoria's producers came to the conclusion that its decreasing sales could not be blamed entirely on the modern spinach-way of feeding children. They reviewed their advertising, the barns throughout the land which for two generations have been plastered with their slogan "Children Cry for It."-- It was all too oldfashioned, they decided, too suggestive of an old-fashioned remedy, so they painted out the signs, discarded the slogan, went in for radio advertising. It worked. A short morning program in 1932 started sales up a bit. An afternoon series of dramatic sketches, called "Pages of Romance," sent them still higher. The contract with Albert Spalding makes Castoria one of radio's first-rank advertisers. Its programs, to be given Wednesday evenings from 8:30 to 9 E. S. T. starting Oct. 4, will have orchestra music led by Don Voorhees, three baritone solos by Conrad Thibault, three violin solos by Spalding and two health-talks to mothers in which Constipation will be emphasized as the root of all evil. Violinist Spalding will start the series with "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen." Almost as striking as the Spalding-Castoria conjunction will be the crooning of Helen Morgan for Bi-So-Dol, stomach sweetener, at 2 p. m. Sundays. Tenor John McCormack will sing lush Irish ballads for Vince mouthwash. Spindling Nat Shilkret & orchestra will provide a background for the Vitamin A in Smith Brothers couph-drops. Nino Martini will sing for Lirit bath softener. Actor Fred Stone, a comparative newcomer to radio, will have his wife and three daughters with him on a Gulf Refining Co. program.--

Broadcasting stations were prepared to say last week which of the popular, high-priced performers have been able to keep sponsors: Eddie Cantor will clown again for Chase & Sanborn, starting the end of October when Ruth Etting's and Jimmy ("Schnozzle") Durante's time is up. Jack Pearl will go on with Lucky Strike cigarets, Amos 'n' Andy with Pepsodent toothpaste, Rudy Vallee with Flelschmann's Yeast. Jack Benny this year performs for Chevrolet Motor Co., Burns & Allen and Guy Lombardo for White Owl Cigars, Bing Crosby for Woodbury Soap, Al Jolson and Paul Whiteman for Kraft-Phenix Cheese.

No sponsor has been able to sign up Ed Wynn who this week opened his 16-station Amalgamated Broadcasting System backed, some say, by Henry Ford. Predictions are that the Fire Chief will soon be giggling and "so-o-o-ing" for himself. But he has announced no programs yet com parable to Columbia's and National Broad casting Co.'s. Columbia this winter will continue paying for the New York Phil harmonic broadcasts, N. B. C. for a Boston Symphony and a Metropolitan Opera series. No sponsor has been found this autumn for Kate Smith, Morton Downey, the Mills Brothers or the Boswell Sisters, names which were lately earning up to $5,000 a week. Columbia is paying them moderate salaries to perform on sustaining programs but most advertisers now want more than one name to show for their fancy expenditures. They are following Hollywood's pattern, staging all-star shows like Fleischmann's Yeast in which Rudy Vallee is little more than a glorified announcer.

--Its contents are senna, bicarbonate of soda, Rochelle salt, wintergreen, pumpkin seed, a touch of peppermint. Children taste only the wintergreen and peppermint.

--Colyumist Walter Winchell last week reported: "Heywood Broun, the esteemed journalist, has good cause to pout. When he was on the radio sometime ago he represented Eno's Fruit Salts, but he wasn't very happy over the connection. The other day he got another radio offer--from Ex-Lax. 'What is this!' he screamed, 'type casting?' "

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