Theatre - The Fabulous Invalid

well well well the old place hasn't changed a bit except prices maybe i'd say about 10 15 markup on last year look at those lights do you suppose there really is a broken heart for every bulb on broadway or is it a busted bulb for every heart looks like an egg grating station in paris sound who's that new lady in town hello yourself doll [Music] how's the weather on your way no kidding say what can we get together fair enough see at the matinee it's cheaper what's this another new hit hey this i've got to see local girl makes good got to get a ticket sold uh i know where i can get one no luck there either [Music] i'll get one from that ticket scalper so what if it cost me double i've got to see this show or bust [Music] [Applause] [Music] last summer in london i kept hearing reports that the new york theater was finally dying things had gotten so bad that they couldn't be worse said the pessimists the optimists said the darkest hour comes before the dawn well as soon as i got back to new york i decided to find out for myself if broadway is on its last legs i've been back for only two weeks now but i can say for certain that if the american theater is in its death throws it's doing a lot of kicking three days after i returned broadway had one of the most electrifying opening nights in years electrifying is almost two tame a word it was downright dangerous to life and limb the deputy is a german play about pope pius xii it's put on by an american management with a british star the play takes place during world war ii and accuses the pope of not speaking out to protest the murder of six million jews by the nazis everywhere the deputy's been staged there have been protests against it in london paris and baal in switzerland and in new york on 46th street catholic war veterans cubans sympathetic jews and a detachment of george lincoln rockwell's american nazi party all picketed outside the brooks atkinson theater the nazis were protected by about 60 patrolmen of the new york city police but their chants were heard inside the theater during the play i talked to emilyn williams the star of the deputy well known for his brilliant impersonations of charles dickens and dylan thomas he plays the role of pope pius xii as the controversy continues and the pickets still walk outside his theater i'm on the front pages of all the newspapers elizabeth taylor is now out the beatles are out i'm not known by my own name of course which i'm rather glad about really i'm just the pope you're not charles dickens anymore no no no no i'm just the pope i only hope it won't tell them i will turn into raven massey as abram lincoln and in about 20 years time they'll they'll they'll still be talking about me as um emily pope williams i suppose you had probably the strangest opening night in new york since the astor riots of 1822. i just remember them wednesday it was the strangest first night i've ever been at or in or whatever you call it i was in it i suppose because i arrived at the stage door and i couldn't get past the television cameras you know how frightened one is of them and uh the screams and the yells outside you saw the nazis in front of the theater when you were going in is that it i'd brushed past them my mustache and we're going to because you're on the first night you you're in such a state of nerves anyway with everybody believing friendly but it's just extraordinary and somebody said you know it's we're used to having marlene dietrich in the audience but not having these people outside and i had to say well of course she does at least keep quiet in the orders and she's much prettier it really was and i got into my room and they were i couldn't have any first night gifts because they were kept away because in case bombs they had to be kept till next day to be examined by the police which it sounds bad but it was true and i was silly enough to open some telegrams and things and there was a telegram saying um how can an actor of your stature which is very flattering because i'm not you know six foot six how can an actor of your stature demean himself by appearing in a play by a nazi demeaning the memory of our sainted past the twelves and this is from a lady and she was a little premature because he hasn't been made a saint yet and he and it wasn't written by a nazi she's a little twisted lady in brooklyn and she said on the end of the of the telegram she said would appreciate reply and if she thinks that i'm going to spend three dollars and reply i think i might send it what you call it a collect don't you think you are definitely a man for all seasons on broadway you're here uh is this your second home by any chance now uh well it's beginning to be yes i was in man for all seasons last season yeah i'm not a man for all seasons this season it's something different this season you have but it's still catholic yes but not remote but not quite the uh reaction that i had last season because the matinees were full of nuns with great high white coifs or whatever they call because they loved the play took place 400 years ago and sir thomas more was the saint but this play that play took place in 1543 and this play i'm afraid except i'm not really afraid because it's make it's the making of the play takes place in 1943 which is dynamite and not quite i don't think i don't think it'll be so many uh high craft nuns the matinees for this one you see there are very good plays that the audience receives in polite uh well with polite apathy and this is really it needles people in the most extraordinary way because now the play settle down and uh we're having as it were normal audiences there there's still an atmosphere of tremendous personal tension that you get from the audience which you don't with with um i was going to say an ordinary play it's a very extraordinary and i don't like players with messages normally because um i think a place should be entertaining and then have a message you know by accident but this play obviously is um if you must have a play with a message this is the one to have obviously one had to feel excited by it because you see anything is better than apathy isn't it a british actor who enjoys his work i was curious to know how a friend of mine an american actor was getting along that empty space in schubert alley means there is no show at the martin beck theater tonight the ballad of the sad cafe has closed and after a four-month run my friend roscoe lee brown may return to his old job in the off-broadway play the blacks or he may remain unemployed is it possible to make a living from the theater and the theater alone in new york city well that's what i'm finding out whether or not it is possible to make a living or a death um in theater um for example donald i've not had a vacation in three years not a week's vacation and yet um i've not made much money and certainly there were long states of work in which um um the intake was so so pitiful like 45 a week that's the minimum that equity um uh demands off for off-broadway and in the main no one pays you more than that of course the blacks became an instant hit and i think we never were paid 45 until um i went back maybe two times three times one of the times i went back i was aware that the actors were not being paid very much because the audiences were no longer um as good as they had been when we went back the last time we went back to um to close it with a flourish they wanted the original cast and they were having very few people nightly well that night it was packed and every night thereafter for those two weeks it was packed and um it's still running it's in its fourth year and the plan is for us to go to europe this summer where is that for the uh some festivals in west berlin and italy i think and i think in france maybe the edinburgh festival and will it be 45 a week oh no i don't go back for 45 a week anywhere anymore anyhow this is that's a principle for you no more minimum it's a principle indeed it's one that i'm capable of breaking of course if the play um invites me that much um i'm sure i would i'm very likely and since this is going into canada and not in the united states i'm very likely to say yes even for nothing as you well know the artists can't if the play is fine i don't care much um i simply know that i hate to have to worry about rent and food and all those other uh things so if the play is fine i would like to know that i don't have to finish doing having a marvelous evening in theater and then wonder when where breakfast is going to come from so um it is for that reason in the main i think we haven't yet become a corporation my agent and i so we simply just say a figure something more than they suggest for the minimum mind you the same performance that i'm giving that i was giving in the blacks i don't mean in terms of its virtual device but having to do that much more that play on broadway the actor would have made certainly if he was unknown he would have been paid about 900 a week and mind you off-broadway for that performance is 45 the um discrepancy there is quite remarkable and and um all together unclear why it must be that way but that's where it is i think it's a scandal but then i'm an actor there's another scandal on broadway this season and this one involves 10 million dollars that's the amount of money in one season that crosses under the counter in exchange for hard to get tickets for hit shows at least that's the figure given by the attorney general of new york state in his official investigation into ticket scalping i went to the bible of showbiz variety magazine and asked their drama critic hobie morrison if he agreed with the attorney general well i i dispute his figure 10 million i think is a preposterous figure that's approximately uh 200 000 a week yes uh there are perhaps uh at the most ten shows that on which there's any volume of ice at all 10 hit shows 10 hit shows at any time and that's a very liberal estimate i think this is to say that there is uh 20 000 a week from 10 shows a piece from 10 shows every week of the year that's a fantastic amount but in any case the public is not being not built defrauded of any of those no no more than the public was built in prohibition when they insisted on buying booze nobody it's a free country nobody has to pay it nobody has to go to see a hit during the first week of the first month they can wait they can see it upstairs where there is no black market or they can wait a while i do not believe that you can get legislation that is going to prevent the public from paying what it wants to for a commodity prohibition didn't work i've been told that in moscow if you go to the bolshoi ballet which is in great demand and go up to the opera house there will be scalpers there offering seats now as i understand it scalping black marketing in russia is a capital offense they're they're executed i mean that's it if they're willing to risk execution in moscow to peddle tickets to the bolshoi nobody need try to tell me that by licensing the box office crew or licensing anybody else that you're going to stop scalping in new york don't think it's those evil new yorkers who patronize ticket scalpers they can wait months to get into a hit show it's the out of town visitor who keeps the scalper in business here's a show that's keeping scalpers happy do you suppose there are canadians paying double their money now to see sir alec guinness co-star kate reed when they wouldn't have bothered to walk around the block four years ago to see her at toronto's crest theater if the lineup at the box office means anything kate's going to be away from canada for a long long time kate reed's heart is still in stratford ontario there is a group of people in new york who are trying to create a stratford down in greenwich village they've got the building already it's only a temporary but so is stratford's first theater inside it looks exactly like the ontario theater only smaller twelve hundred seats it's supported by private contributions and its prices are slightly lower than broadway prices and like any cultural effort it expects to operate at a loss but for a theater that's supposed to be losing money is not doing very well it's a sellout every night just like lawrence olivier's national theater in london harold clermon is the executive consultant of the brand new repertory theater of lincoln center along with hollywood's elia kazan and canada's robert whitehead he's one of the three high priests of this new temple of the arts you said in an article that the theater merits the same kind of support as governments tender to museums libraries and very often to symphony orchestras uh yes i believe that i believe that should be shouted whispered hummed sung every day to every a wealthy person and journalists to the whole country every day morning noon and night but this hasn't really happened so far in this well we're beginning to i'm doing the shouting and i'm hoping the echo will go around the town and the round burst country because unless we uh i realize that i don't can't consider that we're completely civilized i think the most hopeful thing that's happened in the theater in the last few years is the decentralization of the theater that is theater being built away from new york because this country is too large to have one theater of the kind that lincoln center the people want to have new york is a province of our country uh it's one of the larger and more notable provinces but it's a province it's a hick town and we've got to get the play the theater into the country itself wise words from that sleepy little backwater new york city the american public is in love with a british actor oh really i think so sounds nice surely you must feel that but i think they are more impressed uh with us shall we say i don't mean the people us but the uh i'm supposed to think we end up in the theater with english um uh british i should say because richard includes the world i don't like to be called at least i don't mind but he apparently uh likes to be called welsh and you know i think they are more impressed with us than uh they are at home i don't mean to imply by that that we're not good but i think that we get away with more here we do it are you more relaxed in getting away with things here than you are at home uh probably it's like you know you're more on your best behavior at home and you know that your family is um noting the things that about you that they know so well that aren't maybe as marvelous as um uh you you you you get away with more when you go to the neighbor's house don't you think when i was in london i got the impression that the british had taken over broadway that's a big exaggeration english plays conquered the american critics but they captured only a small portion of the audience of the 26 shows now on broadway only four are british two of those oliver and beyond the fringe are holdovers from last season and of the other two luther leaves broadway at the end of march for a short tour that leaves the chinese prime minister i think he's only waiting to move over to the u n now what about the american part of the american theater because of the march on washington last summer this season was to have been the year of the negro on broadway i asked roscoe lee brown if it had happened well as an actor i'm aware that it is not enough just to be negro this year last year nor the yet come it is true that there are many um gratuitous offerings to negros in plays on in on stage and also on television screen you can hardly turn on a television screen and watch a splendid dramatic moment without seeing a negro somewhere in the background or one who came through to say hello mind you there's a great deal of that there is also on the part of people a determination to use actors who might think they regard as fine actors in good parts mind you when you consider uh the easy way with which george scott uh used in his series west side many negroes not just because they're negroes but they were also people whom he knew and he knew them as actors and he knew those actors they were not getting much work and he also thought they were better than lots of people who were getting work and he also um knew why they were not getting work surely he was using them partly because they're any girl but first george did not want anybody in who was just negro but he was after actors and he knew that these fellows didn't network for that particular reason and consequently it is one of the reasons why east side west side has now died because throughout about 26 or 30 stations across the country east side west side cannot be shown because of the integrated castes even when they're not dealing with a subject that is delicate or controversial or that in any way involves race relations in this country but it is dead because of that reason and does that mean that the year of the negro in television is also dead no it means that there was no such year in point of fact and um um it only means that from time to time um people are becoming aware that those things they thought were so critical that would bother and great segments of the country do not bother the great segments as much as the producers and the sponsors with those ghastly always interrupting commercials believe if they had more taste really in leaving out some of the commercials and they have been leaving out actors from their screens i think their problems would not be so large as they suspect mr morrison a variety had something to say about a similar kind of interference in the theater there's a statement in your magazine variety which says that the feeling in the trade is that as usual the theater is being made the scapegoat and pawn of politics would you enlarge upon that well that's uh yes there is that feeling in the trade it's uh it's a feeling that uh i don't i can't substantiate it in the sense that you can't substantiate a general impression but i do think that it's fair to say many many times when politicians want to attract attention they would like to get some kind of a cause to get in the headlines for some purpose perhaps only personal publicity a very easy way to get it is to attack the theater this has been done over and over i remember parnell thomas when he was a congressman from new jersey this is a long time ago now he was the chairman of the un-american activities committee he got a lot of publicity because he discovered that shirley temple was a communist sympathizer uh he's republican i know well maybe that's the same thing to him i don't know but uh all i do know is that the theater is always a fair game for anybody who wants to get some personal exploitation because he can attach his name to that of a number of celebrities and stars and so on and thereby he becomes a big man to the public for a short time why do we make so much fuss about an art that can't possibly be a business that can't possibly pay its way when it tries to say something serious should we worry about its survival because the theater has a way of surviving almost every circumstance that's one of the great things about the theater it manages somehow to survive and whenever you are sure that it's going to die and the doctors practically pronounced it death imminent it sort of revives itself this has something to do with the indomitable need for absolute need for if people would like to call it entertainment if they wish to call it that's all right for theater for for fun for communication for getting together for the joy of play without which of course life would be a very dull thing i want to make one point which i always make most people think that theater is something kind of an appendage to a serious business of life people should know that this thing is not an appendage not an order or a dessert but the essence of life's meal but when it becomes a luxury trade it becomes only for a special generally the other spoiled audience i would say a spoiled audience yes we have a spoiled audience but it doesn't have to be spoiled there's nothing by nature corrupt in the audience but i have a feeling that that new york theater goers and out of towners have a kind of status race they only want the fifth row the two seats on the aisle they're not interested in the dollar ninety seat in the balcony that's what i say that's why i call it uncivilized point of view then it's the audience that's at fault because the seats are there yes but the audience is at fault again you see all of these it's very hard to like it or as in all things it's a vicious cycle it's hard to know where the corruption begins i think the corruption begins myself not in a person but an idea which in its term is created by circumstances the idea being and that the theater is a luxury item and you pin it out you're pinning out your breasts so to speak like an expensive jewel which gives you status it's a it's important that you see a plate because everybody's talking about it not that rather than uh what should be that it's important because mr alby or mr miller or mr berman or miss hellman whoever has something important to say that she's a civilized person that she's an interested person or he is an interesting person that the actors have something to say they have something to communicate and this communication is important for us uh as as reading is important as breathing is important for us as as living is important first because after all if you want to get down to it the living itself is very unimportant it's a purely irrational practice uh there's no reason why anybody should go on living at all actually so we finally take for granted that there's some pleasure in living that there's some reason why we ought to live and the reason is in our pleasure in the fact that we can think and we can see and we can experience sensual and intellectual delights and this is the essence of what the field is supposed to give sensual and intellectual delights food for the spirit animation the desire to continue to live that's what the fetus wall that's what the arts are for and what i say is the very essence it's not again the wars aren't a very uh desirable thing but there's money spent on it a lot of things money is spent on which are absolutely unnecessary but these things which are important people think of as a luxury or something beside the point if that's true then the atom bomb ought to destroy us [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] you