Slickey's Slicker

Britain's angry young Playwright John (Look Back in Anger) Osborne had some thing to be angry about last week. His first musical, The World of Paul Slickey, a savage jab at London's Fleet Street society gossipists, was a critical fiasco.

"Dull," said the Telegraph. "Extraordi narily dull," said the Times. "Incredibly naive and dull," said the Evening Stand ard. In Osborne's own words, Slickey got "the worst notices since Judas Iscariot."

Yet, at week's end, the play was still doing well at the box office, and there was even an outside chance that it might complete its scheduled six-week run at the Palace Theater in London's West End. If Slickey makes it, the credit will go to a gusty young (35) Bostonian named David Pelham, who has bailed himself out of flops before with gimmicks, guts and gall.

In contrast to the soft sell practiced by other West End producers, little (5 ft. 7 in., 135 lbs.) David Pelham busily proclaims his wares any place at any time to anyone who will listen. For the last nine months, Pelham has coaxed people into the theater to see his production of Auntie Mame (TIME, Sept. 22), cashed in on Warner's Auntie Mame movie by taking ads proclaiming "See It Live," stationed 20 men with sandwich boards bearing the same message in front of the theater where the film was playing. The movie moved out after two weeks.

To boom The World of Paul Slickey, Pelham darkly tabbed it "the show they tried to kill," plastered ads in taxis and in rest rooms of Mayfair restaurants. A four-page tabloid called the Daily Racket (after the paper in the play) sprouted on London newsstands, loaded with barbs aimed at Fleet Streeters. Rebuffed in efforts to hold an opening-night party in a Fleet Street pressroom, he hired the Cock Tavern, a newsmen's hangout, decorated it with signs, copies of the Racket, copy boys, celebrities and drink. (The bottle count: 64 whisky, 55 wine, 46 gin, twelve brandy, 240 beer.)

In the aftermath of Slickey's debut last week, Osborne took out after the reviewers with Pelham's help. "Not one daily newspaper critic has the intellectual equipment to assess my work," thundered Osborne in Pelham-sponsored interviews. "They were professional assassins." Despite the assassins, The World of Paul Slickey was not yet dead.

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