Daily News from New York, New York • 227

sd Tlhiealhre TV My I ii li h- 6 5 Out the Drama Will Keep Right Going Because Nothing Can Kill It By JOHN CHAPMAN Up to now, television has not been regarded as a threat to the legitimate stage. It is looked upon, rather, as being a help. For instance, television's use and popularization of variety acts in the New York area has aroused such interest in acrobats and danee teams that vaudeville has been successfully revived at the Palace on a modest scale, to be sure, and in conjunction with a movie. Philosophers of the drama have reasoned that the "live" quality of video is persuading a generation of moviegoers that the living staere is not a bad thing. Philosophers are notoriously impractical.

They live on hope and belief, and it is a shock to them that television has become a definite threat to the commercial stage by taking over as many Broadway theatres as it can get. At the moment of writing, TV has acquired eleven playhouses, and more are being dickered for. Since the late 1920s the number of New York legitimate houses has been diminishing. Some, like the Hippodrome, were just torn down, being white elephants. Many including all the fine theatres on 42d St.

went to the movies. Then the radio muscled in, grabbing all it could get for its audience-participation and giveaway shows. For nearly 20 years the legit has been fighting a rear-guard action, and now television has accelerated this retreat. Next season on Broadway there will be fewer theatres available to drama than there were last season, and last season there were fewer available than there was in 1947-48. You Just Can't Kill It.

Not as many theatres, not as many shows, obviously. So the good Id drama once again is dying, they would have you believe sunk by movies, radio and television. But the theatre is like the common house fly or 5 a CO 13 Adele Robertson keep busy as the manicurist in "Born Yesterday" and also am understudy to Jan Sterling in the town's long' est running comedy. ft 7il the microbe of a socially popular disease. Scientists rig up DDT formula to rid us forever of household pests but the pests promptly develop new powers to resist DDT.

Penicillin or one of the "mycins" comes up to destroy human ailments and the ailments cleverly develop an immunity to these scourges. Broadway is rather weak at the moment, worrying about where the money is going to come from and whether it will have a roof over its head. But it is a lor.g way from being killed off, for the theatre is a part of human instinct and human instinct won't die. If thi- theatre is driven out of one place, it will find another. Troubles are strengthening, not weakening, to those who survive them.

I'd hate to see New York's compact, pleasant and world-important commercial theatre district disappear, for it is a great place to have fun in; but if it does vanish something else and something stronger will have been developed to take its place. Already the various microbes which make the Having toured Spain, South America, Cuba and Mexico, the Spanish musical revue "Cabalgata" arrives at the Broadway Theatre Thursday night with Rosa de Avila, Miguel Herrero and Carmen Vasquem (above) in leading roles. EVEN STAGE MONEY IS SCARCE By ROBERT SYLVESTER The Fall list has no less than 3n count 'em SO musical shows of one type or another and some of are already in production. But it is doubtful if more than two or three of these musicals, many of which are at leat partly cast an snir.e virtually in rehearsal, actually have the miner n--d-d for a tnal production. Stage money is jut as hard gf-t days as any olhc-r kind of money.

One of the first Fall muk als, cast and in jiro'u--tion, still has less than half the money nerded to actually hring it to New York. Another show is goinir ahead with prhi-tion although only about $20,000 of a necessary I is in the bank. drama a disease are working on ways of survival. I Actors, apraued at their present economic troubles, are thinking of a decentralized theatre. Managers are making their productions far afield, wherever costs are cheapest.

And, in New York itself, decentralization is beginning. An outfit calling itself the Lemonade Opera has firmly established itself in a church basement. It is modest and semi-pro but it is popular and self-assured. A group called New Stages works valiantly on newsworthy plays in Greenwich Village. Now we are coming to the arena theatre, or theatre-in-the-round, as it has been developed by Margo Jones in Dallas and Gilmor Brown in Pasadena.

Show Goes Round and Round. Several bids have been made for the one-time skyscraper night club, the Rainbow Room, at the top of the RCA Building in Rockefeller Center. It is a perfect theatre-in-the-round, and it has a revolving stage. One or another of the various Rainbow Room projects ought to come through, and it is not impossible that some of our most interesting drama will be found there in the coming season. At the moment, any location suitable for conversion to an arena theatre is being sought in New York.

Night clubs, armories and riding academies have been mentioned. Such stirrings are an indication that the drama is going to make the usual fight for its life; it isn't going to quit because television has knocked off a dozen of its theatres. It is civilization's oldest resistance movement, and if it has to go underground, overground, or around and around, it will do so. Another resistance movement slowly stirs to life, too the more obvious one of building more playhouses on Broadway. The ones we have are outmoded, and might just as well be the hand-me-downs for radio and television.

Whenever building costs can be made a few percent less than operating Such is the of musical investors today that ore night week a musical playt-d its addition for potential Lackers. T'lis 3'es not come close to the record number of atiditVins set hy the late, lamented "Heaven on Earth." but it jriv-s in idea of what a prod icer has to jro through to raise money. Further, potential backers at auditions are now so picky and choopy that at another readii last week half the "audience" waited mit after the first act. They didn't even stay for the fre whisVy and sandwiches which are always a holding influence at such affairs. Arnold Saint Sul bf and Lemuel Avers, producers of Kiss Me, Kate," arrive on the West Cat tomorrow and will immediately hudd'e wi'h Cole Porter who has completed 10 sonrs for the new musical the trio will do together.

Although 1 ael on the Amphitryon lesrend, the new show will nut use the Girardoux version or the title "Amphitryon. David Wayne and Carol Channing are now practically definite for two of the leading roles. Tallulah wan pict ired at a bam theatre giving "advice" to Farah rht.irch:!!, a few rs aeo. Miss Earkhead later admitted that the whoie thing was a publicity stunt but that she had be able to five C'h jrchill some good, tere advice about television. "I told her," Tallulah revealr-d, "that she shouM always shave before going on television." Eileen Seigh is featured skater with "Howdy Mr.

lea of J950" which will play two shows at tha Center Theatre, Radio City, today and two shows tomorrow. This skating revue also plays its regular Wednesday matinee. Miriam Hopkins returns to the stage at the Flatbush, Brooklyn, Tuesday in the title role of "The Heiress." She'll travel to the Windsor, Bronx, the next week. profits, we'll have fine new places with comfortable THE GOLDEN DOZEN Current attraction in New Tork theatres -bit-h have retrtJei runs. Perhaps the most shamefaced actor in the business Ezio Pinra f.f -South Pacific." When that hit was in rehearsal Pinza stubbornly refused the nonral allotment of house seats Rightly which are his privilege as a Pinza toid the manaireir'ent that he had no in-ten'ion of through nigh'lv Dramatic Yesterday Born .1,434 ANTA's Medal The third Hamlet Gold Medal awarded in the 13 years of the Hamlet Festival in Elsinore, Den- mark, has been awarded the American National Theatre and Academy "Hamlet" troupe by the Darish National Open Air Stage society.

WEEK'S OPENING THURSDAY "Cabalgata," Spanish revue in I "Streetcar Named Desire" 663 chairs, escalators and roomy lobbies, and the commercial theatre will have a new breathing spell. Stronger Than Ever. If Broadway should die, something will have taken its place. A decentralized theatre with vigorous units in all the towns of the land may develop from the present fine work being done by and the fine new equipment available in our colleges and universities. New York itself may become decentralized, with major activities being conducted in the Rainbow Room, a couple of skating rinks and some more church basements.

But I doubt if Broadway will quit. It is frankly commercial but all of the most important dramatic art and the most important artists of the last two or three generations have been developed by it and in it. I hate to see a batch more cf its playhouses going over to television but I'm betting on it to survive. And, like the fly which has survived the newfangled spray, it will come back stronger than ever and more annoying at time. 574 .264 164 135 301 266 22S 212 99 "Mister Roberts" "Goodbye.

JIt Fancy" "Death of a Salesman" "At War With Army" Musical "Where's Charley "As the Girls Go" "Lend an Ear" "Kiss Me, Kate" "South Pacific" bookkeeping connected with sale of tickets. He figured it would be j'ist too much of a nuiance. Martha Wright, currently sing-; 5ng at The Blue Angel, ha a fair- ly important day tomorrow. la the morning she audition for a lead in "Great to Be Alive" and la 1 the afternoon for "Gentlemen Pre-1 er Blondes." two acts and 18 scenes, at the Broadway Theatre. Performances will be nightly except Mondays with Saturday and Sunday 51 "Howdy Mr.

Ice of 1930".