Judge — April 1938 — page 32: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

VER since Greek met Greck in the cyptess groves of Hellas the boys have been shouting that the theatre is dying. The theatre zs dying; the theatre, in fact, is virtually dead. And the movies are responsible. Not because Hollywood has been reaching out like an omnivorous octopus to snatch every available bit of talent. Not because there are no longer the playwrights of old. Not because actors and actresses of today are not chipped off the same block as were their predecessors, Not any of these. No, the theatre is dying of suicide. Today it is far more fun, more to the point, and infinitely more advantageous to spend your leisure hours in a revolv- ing door than to try to wheedle a mod. erately good seat from the man behind the grill of a box office. If it is a hit show to which you seek a seat, then you'll have to work more frenziedly than a palsied riveter trying fora bonus. And then you'll be grudg- ingly rewarded with a dinner-jacketed sneer and a choice pew in Row ZZ THE THEATRE By Carroll Case behind a pillar, where you will be in. terrupted only intermittently by the crosstown cars running across your lap. Even if it is not a hit show the dif. ficulties and hazards are almost as great. Then, it seems, box office inhabitants are overcome with a lethargy that knows no awakening, meeting life with the de. featist attitude that the show will fold soon, anyway. That, we suppose, is why they put grills in box office windows. You may prod the ticket sellers now and then with your shillalah, but a good ten-count poke becomes an impossibility. Once having cajoled your way past the man with the iron mask, what do you find? Ushers who are vastly more interested in whatever it is that always interests ushers so absorbingly when the cash customer wants to find his seat. Finally, you manage to break into this fascinating chit-chat long enough to have one of them grudgingly show you to your seat, which, it turns out, has been hidden in one of Mr. Rosoff's excavations. Maybe you've been lucky enough to get a program. Maybe not. Having got comfortably settled in your scat, however bad it may be, you sit back and breathe deeply of the stale air that is the only remembrance of the last flop housed by that theatre. The plush seat is dirty, hot, and more likely than not lists to leeward, but at least you've finally got a place you can call your own. Or have you? . . . In three minutes the usher is back, followed by two dis. gruntled patrons; they all accuse you of having deliberately sat in the wrong seat in the wrong aisle of the wrong theatre. By this time the curtain is up and some sort of action is going on onstage. That, of course, is a mere detail that has no bearing on the case in hand; the usher shifts you, twelve people in your row, and half the balcony before it is finally discovered that, after all, it was her mis. take. You are in the right seat, and may, with God's help, remain there to view what is left of the performance. Compare all this with almost any motion picture theatre. What do you get in those palaces that purvey the cinema in assorted doses? For twenty- five to seventy-five cents, compared to the theatre’s $1.10 to $4.40, all you get is Carole Lombard and Spencer Tracy; a perfect production costing mil- lions; news reels; and Mickey Mouse. You also get celestial seats from which you can see all that is going on, polite ushers that somehow go with the seats, air-cooled and perfectly ventilated theatres, a comfortable lounge where you may smoke, and a girl like your first love in the box office. Yes, indeedy. The theatre is certain. ly being killed by the movies. . . . And none too soon. The Judge comicbooks.com