Word: shows
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Broadway playgoer can spot a hit by the line at the box office. For the record, Billboard has denned a hit as a show that runs for more than 100 performances. Last week, by the formal definition, an overdressed underdog of a revue called All for Love (TIME, Jan. 31) became the costliest, floppingest "hit" in U.S. theatrical history...
Rarely has a show reached its 100th-performance milestone in spite of a hostile press. All for Love is rarer still: it got there in spite of an apathetic public. Its only impetus has come from a stubbornly stagestruck millionaire named Anthony Brady Farrell, an angel with the largest wingspread ever seen on Broadway.* In the year since Farrell took a leave from his Albany chain factory, he has spent more than $2,000,000 plunging where others fear to tread...
Cash Deal. A slight, weatherbeaten man of 49, Farrell realized a longtime ambition last season when he got a chance to put up all the money for the musicomedy Hold It!. Most of Manhattan's reviewers panned the show, but Farrell, who knows what he likes, wanted to keep it going. Six weeks and $300,000 later, he made his own odd diagnosis: the show's theater (where Call Me Mister had rolled up a hit run) was no good...
Renewed Faith. Without stopping the show, Farrell gradually had the whole thing restaged, scene by scene. Heartened by letters from some of his customers, he asked the reviewers to come back and take another look. Three of them felt up to it, but the verdict came out just about the same. At losses ranging from $15,000 to $23,000 a week, Farrell, who has watched almost every one of the 100 performances, stuck to his conviction that his show was the best musical on Broadway. As a visitor to Manhattan, he has seen every musical since 1914. Rich...
...mental state that resembles a guilt complex, Farrell feels occasional doubts. Recently he told an interviewer he would quit Broadway when the current adventure was ended. But last week, when holiday crowds pepped up the box-office take, he took on a new determination to keep the show going. His taste in entertainment was improving, too: he had seen the new musical hit, South Pacific, and it had "renewed my faith in the theater." Now he wants to do a show as good as that...