How to Save a Show

All the Way Home, the Broadway adaptation of James Agee's novel, A Death in the Family, opened at the Belasco Theater the end of November, won mixed but generally favorable reviews. But the next day's box office gross was a leukemic $882. Commenting that "they killed us with respect," Producers Fred Coe and Arthur Cantor announced that All the Way would close after four performances.

Full of good theater and moving insight, occasionally awkward but full of memorable moments, the play deserved a longer run. Ed Sullivan, on his Sunday night television show, told the faithful to go out and buy tickets--it was one of the best shows he and Sylvia had seen in ten years. Cantor, 40, a onetime Broadway pressagent, dropped the right word to the right columnist, reminded people that a ground swell saved Billy Budd in 1951.

Box office sales leaped to $5,700 a day, helped by private citizens who believed so strongly in the play that they made phone calls to friends at the rate of 50 a day, others who took newspaper ads at their own expense to urge people to hurry to the Belasco. By week's end, All the Way Home had been extended at least until the first of the year. If it runs less than six months, a lot of hats will be up for eating.

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