Revelry by Night

May 1 there were 28 shows on Broadway. June 1 there were 16. Such a slump is normal enough at season's end, but this year Broadway thought that the New York World's Fair would keep her dolled up in her midwinter ermines. Instead, with New Yorkers scurrying to Flushing and out-of-towners in no rush to get to New York, the Fair has Broadway limping about in rags. Last month within a few days more casts petitioned Actors' Equity Association to be allowed to take cuts than at any other time in Equity's history; and most of the shows, even on reduced expenses, had to fold. Smart money predicted that only eight of Broadway's 16 shows can. survive the summer.

The Fair has hit most night spots as hard as the shows. Many night clubs smell of fresh paint, gleam with new chromium, prance with new legs, but the nocturnstiles are not clicking--while at the Fair such places as the French Pavilion, where the check for eight people may come to $90,. are jammed. Some of the entertainments which Manhattan's 135 night-club owners have put on for hoped-for Fair visitors:

Floor Shows. Closed is Smart Showman Billy Rose's famed Casa Manana, but sparkling with the brightest floor show in town is his Diamond Horseshoe. In a room decked out with expertly hideous. Mauve Decade decor, on a tiny stage above a tremendous bar, the Diamond

Horseshoe flings a gay revue of yesteryear, all fluffy ruffles and "cheesecake." Scenes of pre-War Rector's, of Delmonico's on New Year's Eve with Diamond Jim Brady and Lillian Russell, a medley of old Ziegfeld Follies tune hits, tincture sex with nostalgia. Waddling souvenir of the past is onetime Glamor Girl Fritzi Scheff gurgling Kiss Me Again.

As much a part of the Broadway scene as a ham actor out of work, the flashy International Casino, melting pot of buyers, cooks up a long, elaborate girls-&-gagsters vaudeville. With never a lozenge to cool his throat, Wisecracker Milton Berle (Earl Carroll Vanities) serves as tireless, tedious Master of Ceremonies for such acts as Georgie Tapps's neat dancing, Harry Richman's loud singing, and Caribbean Rapture, a writhing dance to voodoo drums that is the best and warmest of Manhattan's tropical chorus spectacles.

Once the boast of Harlem, now just a strong link in the Broadway chain, the Cotton Club doops a lot of colored hotcha and horseplay. Though much of the old animal verve of Harlem has given way to routine Broadway showmanship, the show has winning headliners in Tapster Bill Robinson (see col. j) and Crooner Cab Galloway; a pleasant surprise in Hymn Swinger Sister Tharpe; plenty of jungle sex.

Across the George Washington Bridge in New Jersey, sitting high and cinematic on the Palisades, is Ben Marden's ornate million-dollar Riviera. Its show, gaudy and gay but clean as one of Beau Brummell's neckcloths, has routine ballet and crooning, a panting jitterbug fest, Comic Joe Lewis, who--after rusticating most of the evening--goes to town at the end, and Mary Raye and Naldi, whose beautiful dancing steals the show.

Brash, noisy Leon & Eddie's has not varied in years, still offers cartwheel and carte blanche entertainment. Its ferocious Apache dance is the next thing to murder, but the crowd really goes to hear Proprietor Eddie Davis, whose smutty jokes and songs like Myrtle Isn't Fertile Any More are subtle as a burglar alarm and rouse the house just as effectively, and who for ten years has had his trained-seal patrons dutifully bellow out the choruses of She Came Rollin' Down the Mountain.

Only swank night spot with anything like a full-sized show (Hotel St. Regis' gay, fast-moving ice frolic is the best brief show) is the lustrous Rainbow Room with its dazzling night view from the 6sth floor of Rockefeller Center's RCA Building. Suave, refined, pleasantly conventional, the show headlines Musicomedy-Find-of-The-Year Mary Martin, who sings My Heart Belongs to Daddy in Leave It to Me.

Swank. Manhattan's glamor spots are short on entertainment, long on drinking, atmosphere, names, the bill. Snooty, half filled with celebrities, half with celebrity-chasers, offering Lucullan food but not even the twang of a guitar, is Jack & Charlie's legendary "21." After midnight, debs, young Roosevelts, Beatrice Lillie, Tallulah Bankhead, lesser fry, haunt Sherman Billingsley's cool, decorative Stork Club. More on the Social Register side, less on the Who's Who, and both hard on the purse, are pugnacious John Perona's zebra-striped, rhumba-flavored El Morocco, the newer and elegant Fefe's Monte Carlo.

Swing. In small, low-ceiled, table-touching spots where there is hardly room enough to swing a cat, the "cats" swing the room late and loud. Headquarters for swing is Manhattan's sand Street with its solid block of night spots (during speakeasy days, an irate 5 2nd Street householder defensively posted a sign reading "Private House"). On 52nd Street is The Onyx Club, Swing's self-styled "cradle," where Crooner Maxine Sullivan hops things up; The Famous Door, where Trumpeter Louis Prima lays siege to the eardrums; Jack White's 18 Club, which goes in for bughouse antics, wisecracks, catcalls, pranks and late hours; The Hickory House, where the "cats" do some of their best caterwauling, put on special Sunday matinees. Chief Greenwich Village branch for swing is the bright-basemented bohemian Cafe Society, "the right place for the wrong people."

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