Boon for the Bowl

Perhaps it was the neighborhood it is in. Some of the Hollywood Bowl's best friends were accusing it of settling into a state of lucrative mediocrity. To bring the crowds in, the long-suffering Hollywood Bowl Symphony Orchestra had been doing some strange tricks this season, sometimes with only a single rehearsal. It played an all-Gershwin concert under Paul Whiteman's baton; it struggled through an evening of "Music of the Americas" led by Xavier Cugat (who complained bitterly during, a 1946 rehearsal that the orchestra failed to "pay him any respect"); it accompanied Margaret Truman's concert debut.

These tricks were profitable; the Gershwin concert drew 20,000, as against 6,400 for an all-Brahms concert conducted by the New York Philharmonic's Bruno Walter. Bowl Manager Karl Wecker (whose salary is scaled to Bowl profits) explained: "If I have to play Gershwin to carry Brahms, I'll do it."

The stunts pleased everyone but those who wanted to maintain the Bowl's 20-year reputation as a center of serious music in Southern California. The orchestra had been without a conductor since Leopold Stokowski left this spring. Last week, apparently embarrassed by the variety-show tone of its 1947 season, the Bowl hired Eugene Ormandy as "principal conductor and musical adviser" for 1948. In a guest appearance last season, Ormandy got more out of the orchestra than anyone else was able to. Ormandy will still keep his winter job with the Philadelphia Orchestra (where he had also succeeded Stokowski), but his new contract calls for him to conduct at least 16 of the Bowl's 1948 summer concerts.

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