Never Whistle in a Dressing Room
By
MAURICE ZOLOTOW’S Never Whistle in a Dressing Room is an inside-Broadway book, showing you the who’s who, the what’s what, and the here’s how of the Great White Way. The why, of course, is devotion to the fountain of eternal lucre.
Mr. Zolotow has a special fondness for human curiosities both individual and institutional; it is therefore not surprising that his two best chapters are both about rogues — ticket hustlers and pitchmen. Ticket hustlers are illegal ticket speculators, and their ingenuity is truly out of this world. Pitchmen are itinerant, open-air hawkers who sell kitchen gadgets, eradicators, and medicines, at swollen prices. The mark-up generally ranges between 70 and 80 per cent. These pitchmen, “remnants of the adventurous merchant traders of the Renaissance period,” do an estimated business of $150,000,000 a year.
Scholar Zolotow’s chapter on the hat-checking industry may open some eyes. The annual overhead is relatively negligible, the annual “take” is $250,000,000. (And taken it is.) The chapter on fortune-telling is amusing, as are the facts and figures; four out of ten people half believe in it, 5,000,000 actually run their lives by it, and persons in the United States are now spending $200,000,000 a year trying to learn the future.
Two more conservative notes from Mr. Zolotow ‘s informative researches: Howard S. Cullman, currently the theater’s favorite finance-capitalist, in three years has realized 80 per cent over and above theatrical investments totaling $200,000. The radio serial, that, badgered institution, annually yields $25,000,000 — which is one third of the broadcasting industry’s yearly revenue — and has inevitably become its backbone; as a form of entertainment it is unequivocally demanded by the public.
Never Whistle in a Dressing Room should amuse those who enjoy fantastic behavior. Dutton. $2.7-5.
SCHUYLER WATTS
SCHUYLER WATTS