A.F.M.'s Week

There was an unusually big morning audience at Manhattan's Palace Theatre one day last week. When 200 of them failed to leave after the first show, the management learned what was up. The 200 were jobless musicians from Local 802, biggest branch of the American Federation of Musicians. They had come well-supplied with cigarets and sandwiches and prepared to stay in their seats until RKO Service Corp. should agree to hire two movie-house orchestras for its theatres in each of New York's five boroughs. By the time they had seen the fifth run of the Palace's double feature, many of Local 802 were asleep. Others massed in the men's room to eat, smoke and converse. Somebody connected with the theatre turned off a water-cooler. A musician called up the Board of Health and had it turned back on. RKO, however, made no promises. At 2:45 a. m. most of the musicians had gone home.

Trivial as the Palace episode was, it pointed up the plight of the thousands of U.S. musicians thrown out of jobs these many years by records and sound-films. This week, when delegates from all 350 A.F.M. locals assembled in Louisville for their national convention, they began to put their case before the nation. Main purpose of the convention was to decide what might be done about "canned" music. Boss James C. ("Mussolini") Petrillo of the Chicago chapter was out to make national the ban on recording which he enforced locally on union men last winter (TIME, Jan. 4). A.F.M.'s President Josephs Weber of New York may have doubted the wisdom of such drastic action but his hand was being forced. When election of national officers of the A.F.M. is held, Chicago's Petrillo will make a strong challenge for the national presidency, held by New York's Weber since 1900.

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