Dear Me, the Sky Is Falling

Never long on inrushing angels, Broadway last week was vigorously fearful that it might soon be running out of fools as well. What alarmed producers, agents and theater owners was the New York Times, which had just published its annual article proclaiming the Broadway season a historic disaster. During the 1962-63 season, said the Times, "investors lost $5.574,944." Faced with such figures, could Broadway ever find another investor?

But the funereal figure, first of all, was incorrect in the Times's own terms.

After adding up the $5,574,944 in losses, the paper listed nine shows that had so far made $1,254,422 in profits. The Grey Lady's grey matter failed to execute the obvious next step and subtract the second figure from the first.

A Funny Thing. Even to say that the Broadway theater had lost $4,320,522 would have been misleading. To obtain the figure, the paper listed all the shows that had opened on Broadway this season, what they cost, and what they had thus far lost or earned. When you lose on Broadway you lose all at once, bang, bang, you're dead. But when you hit, it takes a long while, sometimes more than there is left of a season, to recover the investment. After that, the gravy rolls in for years. Hence it is possible to list with reasonable accuracy the losses suffered in any one year. But it is meaningless to contrast these losses only with the first blossoms of profits that will go on and on. A successful show makes money not only from its own extended run, but from road companies, records, movie sales, and other ancillary sources that the Times ignored.

A conspicuous example is the case of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. The show opened toward the end of the last season, too early to show a profit then before the editorial books closed. (The date for season's end is rather mystically decided by editors and reviewers when they conclude that nothing of great importance is left to open and that it is time for their vacations.) Forum ran all through the summer, is still running strong, and is pulling in added profits every week ($415,000 so far). But it does not appear in the Times's analysis because it did not open this season. For another example, How to Succeed in Business was left out of the Times's box score altogether, although it has earned nearly $700,000 in this season alone.

Failing Fluff. In other words, a meaningful figure for a given season's profit or loss can only be determined some five or ten years later--not five or ten days before the season's end. A more immediate index is the attendance figures, which can be presented in almost complete form. Attendance this year has fallen off 8/10 of 1% from last year. It has not significantly changed over the past decade.

If the theater people won their point, it was not much of a point to win. The entire rhubarb, after all, was about nothing but money. The Broadway theater is indeed not dying. But it is not living very meaningfully either. At some expense to serious drama, it calculatedly emphasizes entertainment; but much of its chosen fluff fails utterly to entertain. When truly superior work comes along, it will always achieve Broadway production.

But work that merely shows quality will generally be pushed aside, as producers cater to theater parties and out-of-town buyers. As a result, Broadway's playhouses are little more than oversized brick television sets.

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