Word: proscenium
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...words & music by Hans Muller & Ralph Benatsky; Rowland Stebbins, Warner Bros., Rockefellers, producers) is very large, very colorful, very oldfashioned. A pre-War production afflicted with post-War megalomania, White Horse Inn will doubtless spread its abundant, handsome Tirolese sets out into the audience and up beyond the proscenium arch of John D. Rockefeller's Center Theatre in Radio City for as long a stay as The Great Waltz...
Before it packed props and departed for the hinterlands, "Personal Appearance" titillated New York appetites for fifteen big, happy months. Brock Pemberton has now fitted Lawrence Riiey's opus with a second cast and loosed its lusty voice from the proscenium of the Plymouth theatre, just recently quieted after the robust howls of "Three Men on a Horse." Like its predecessor, "Personal Appearance" is definitely big-box-office. The roar of good, healthy American laughter is long and very loud. Your people, sir, enjoy "Personal Appearance...
...dance man (Follies) modestly limits his appearance to a few skits. But his wife, little Ray Dooley, has all sorts of funny things to do. At one point she is hoisted to the top of a pyramid formed by half a dozen jibbering Arab tumblers. Teetering just under the proscenium arch, she is the picture of comic terror. Again, as an aged Merry Widow, she is tossed all over the stage by a full chorus, while irrepressible Bobby Clark (& McCullough) leads her through a bumbling waltz...
...real hero of the occasion is the huge stage of the huge Center Theater (3,700 seats) which has been a money-loser for a year as Rockefeller Center's second-string cinema theatre. Producer Max Gordon was obliged to build a new proscenium because the original arch would have dwarfed even his gigantic sets. In the finale, the orchestra pit rises majestically, slides back to join the other half of the orchestra onstage. and the united orchestra keeps on sliding back and back, leaving a huge ballroom with golden chandeliers and white and gold columns, ready...
...always so, as will testify the deep sardonic lines which frame his smiling mouth like a stern proscenium...