Word: theaters
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...years ago, Noel Coward's Private Lives was no great shakes as a play. When it was revived this fall on Broadway, it had plainly not improved with the years. But last week, as it has for the past six weeks, Private Lives was packing the Plymouth Theater with as many standees as the New York Fire Department will allow. What the customers were crowding to see was not so much a play as a remarkable personality with a remarkable name: Tallulah Bankhead...
Tallulah * is not the first lady of the theater. She is the theater's first personality. The theater's current first lady is a kind of composite of Helen Hayes, Katharine Cornell, Judith Anderson, Lynn Fontanne-and Tallulah. But Tallulah does not fit neatly into a category, and other ladies of the stage, whatever their virtues as actresses, pale beside her as stars pale when a bonfire is lighted...
...Footlights. As the theater's first personality, Tallulah currently commands its stiffest terms: 15% of the gross receipts, plus 25% of the net profits. During the 53-week cross-country tour that preceded the New York opening, the current revival of Private Lives took in about $1,000,000. Tallulah's average estimated weekly income, not including an occasional $2,500 to $3,000 for a radio stint...
...their emotional peak in 1930 at her last London play, Let Us Be Gay. They waited in line for 36 hours to get in. When the doors opened, police cordons crumbled under a wild stampede, and some who had been first in line picked themselves up to find the theater full. Halfway through the show they stormed, 100 strong, into the lobby, yelling and screaming, until the bobbies rallied to throw them back...
...William Waldorf Astor estate, the Shuberts also got famed "Shubert Alley," the narrow thoroughfare through the block, in which Lee Shubert's big Cadillac is usually parked. Unlike the Radio City deal, which promised a vast change in the landscape, this one promised little. The four theaters, built and owned by the Shuberts, are also operated by them. The Shuberts, who would have lost them when their lease expires in 1952, reportedly bought them because movie companies were eying the property. The deal strengthened their position as the biggest, oldest, most hidebound-and most successful-operators in U.S. theater...