Word: boxful
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...Deal's end. But general agreement, not only in Washington D. C., but in Oregon, Illinois, Minnesota, Kansas, etc., was that, with stage set, audience waiting, superspectacle prepared-with a fine cast of characters, a wonderful story, a happy ending-the star performer was poison at the box office...
Never long absent from it, the Bard has his ups & downs on Broadway. He starts off with the box-office liability of being highbrow, with the box-office asset of commanding a small but steady audience made up largely of: 1) cultists -the kind of people who (depending on their age) have seen every Hamlet from Booth's, or Forbes-Robertson's, or Barrymore's, to Maurice Evans'; 2) seekers after the "worthwhile," who dutifully imbibe Shakespeare as they swallow Beethoven and spinach; 3) school children, offspring...
This season, grand opera at Manhattan's Metropolitan opened with a slightly fussier fuss than usual. Last week, however, the Met got in the groove-a few new voices and a new red carpet, but the same old scenery, same old gilded box holders, and opera's perennial bright angel, NBC, occupying Grand Tier Box 44 for the Saturday matinee, Boris Godunoff...
...Box 44 sit two men the radio audience never hears. Engineer Charles C. Grey has a control panel at his fingertips; Production Man Herbert Liversidge hardly lifts his eyes from an edited, last-minute score. Liversidge reads the score some six bars ahead, keeps Grey posted with hand signals on who or what is coming-a thumb-forefinger circle for female soloists, a single, raised finger for men; two for duets, all five for choruses, a clinched fist for the whole works. Grey watches the signals, ready to take squeals out of coloraturas, distortion out of tenors, ear-splits...
...most radio listeners, however, a third man in Box 44 is synonymous with opera itself. He is 42-year-old Milton John Cross, a huge, humble, bespectacled, music-charmed announcer whose cultured, genuflecting voice seems to his public to come straight from NBC's artistic soul. Radio listeners hear a tremolo of anticipation when Milton Cross's bated, bass-viol voice tells them: "The house lights are being dimmed. In a moment the great gold curtain will...