Angel Having Fun

Broadway's No. 1 angel is urbane, likable, 52-year-old Howard Stix Cullman. By all the rules of the game, he also should be Broadway's No. 1 sucker. Far from it, he is just about the smartest picker in show business. Since last spring he has picked seven hits in a row; he owns from 7% to 20% of The Voice of the Turtle, Kiss and Tell, Othello, Lovers and Friends, A Connecticut Yankee, The Cherry Orchard and One Touch of Venus. He also owns 20% of Life With Father and 25% of Arsenic and Old Lace, Broadway's two oldest moneymakers. His nine current shows, with their road companies, are grossing over $300,000 a week at the rate of $15,000,000 a year.

Pay-Off. Tobacco is Cullman's business, investing in shows merely a hobby--but it has become high finance as well because he has gimlet theatrical eyes and no Achilles' tendon. Neither stagestruck, girl-crazy, art-mad nor long-shot-minded, he backs shows simply because he thinks they will pay off. The fun lies in the fact that they can pay off at astronomical rates.

Cullman began angeling six years ago, with a show that ran for three performances and cost him $22,500--the most he has ever invested in a play. His second show was Life With Father, which so far (and the end, he feels sure, is generations off) has brought him $150,000 for $5,000.* He has backed 45 shows in all; nine have been flops, five near-flops.

Setup. Cullman's first, unvarying rule in picking scripts: "They must hold my interest." His second, almost unvarying one: "There must be a movie in them." Hollywood insurance has more than once compensated him for Broadway injuries. But partly because it was adapted from a show whose movie rights had been sold, Cullman made his worst blunder, turned down Oklahoma!

Before backing a play, Cullman goes carefully into both its financial setup and its production plans. But once in, "I never interfere--if the people don't know more than I do, then I don't want to be in on the show. I've never suggested a star, walk-on or cashier--fortunately, none of my relatives ever hankered to be any of the three." Nearest Cullman comes to being a nuisance is in phoning theater people early in the morning. "Listen, Cullman!" Russel Crouse once screamed into the receiver, "I got into this show business because I like to sleep late."

An angel as busy as Cullman has to get up in the morning. Besides being vice president of Cullman Brothers Inc. which owns Benson & Hedges (Parliament, Virginia Rounds), he is vice chairman of the Port of New York Authority, president of Beekman Hospital, chairman of the Program Committee of the New York City Center. He writes hundreds of letters, makes hundreds of phone calls a day, never slowing up for a second. "He wants everything done yesterday," a Port Authority associate once said.

Walkout. Cullman has dabbled in stage doings since prepping at Phillips Exeter Academy, where he took part in French plays "which neither the cast nor the audience understood." At Yale, trying to become drama editor of the Yale Courant, he wangled an interview with Sarah Bernhardt. When he asked her, "Do your love affairs help you to understand the parts you are playing?" she walked out on him.

During the '20s he helped nurse along Greenwich Village's famed Provincetown Playhouse. During the '30s he proved his "merchant eye" for entertainment. When the Roxy movie palace went bust, the receivers appointed Cullman to run it. Within the first year, using a fire-sale technique, he swung it over from a $4,000 weekly loss to a $6,500 weekly profit. He slashed admission prices, sponsored fashion shows, gave away roses, tried to book Huey Long. Five years after Cullman started running it, the Roxy--handsomely solvent -- was sold to 20th Century-Fox.

Last week he took a flyer of his own in theater operating. With Playwright Russel Crouse, Actor Elliott Nugent and others, he bought a Broadway theater (the Hudson)--"so we needn't be subject to certain guys' whims and fancies." Naturally he also bought into the first show which he hopes will be produced there, a fall item for Boris Karloff being written by Lindsay and Crouse.

*Actually all Cullman's investments are split with his older brother Joe, who is not merely a silent partner, but a muzzled one. Says Howard: ''If Joe walks out on a show opening night, it's sure to be a hit. Joe is always wrong."

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