Radio: Call of the Islands

Archie, the dimwitted, malapropped manager of Duffy’s Tavern, has never been known to his Third Avenue customers or his nationwide radio audience as a particularly fast man with a buck. But by last week, when Duffy’s Tavern (Thurs. 9:30 p.m., NBC) returned to the air, it was clear that Archie was under the smartest kind of management. Rasp-voiced Ed Gardner, who plays Archie and produces the program, had accomplished the modern miracle of getting out of the reach of the tax collector.

The miracle required his moving from Manhattan to Puerto Rico, where Duffy’s Tavern is now tape-recorded and flown to the U.S. Last week Gardner was living in a rented mansion in San Juan’s exclusive King’s Court, hard at work on such ambitious sidelines as a movie (Pigs’ Feet in Paris) and filmed television shorts.

The call of the islands had been crooned by the Puerto Rico Industrial Development Co., a local government agency interested in promoting new business. Under island law, Gardner has to pay neither U.S. income tax nor any Puerto Rican income, property or excise taxes on any of the movies or TV shows he produces. The Puerto Rican exemptions run until 1959 and, as long as he is resident in the islands, he appears to be safe from the U.S. tax collectors. Gardner resents the imputation that he is a tax dodger. “It’s just a hell of a good business opportunity,” he explains. “I want to make pictures and I came here because they’re cheaper to make in Puerto Rico than anywhere else.”

Though far from the comforting rumble of the Third Avenue “el,” Gardner is not likely to become homesick. Under the new law, 50 U.S. companies (chinaware, leather goods, textiles) have already moved to Puerto Rico and more are expected by boat and plane.