The Theater: New Revue in Manhattan, Dec. 18, 1944

The Seven Lively Arts (produced by Billy Rose) had been ballyhooed for months to sound like the eighth wonder of the world. The production, what with buying and brilliantining the historic Ziegfeld Theater, cost $1,350,000. The show had a record-breaking advance ticket sale of $550,000. It opened at a $24 top, with enough big names on the program for a vest-pocket Who’s Who, enough plushy people in the audience for a reception to royalty. And in the crowded lounge during intermission, with flunkeys passing champagne, it looked like one.

Stripped of its fancy wrappings, The Seven Lively Arts is oversized and overstuffed. At times the whole thing seems less like the seven lively arts (which presumably include dressmaking and sex) than like seven luxury hotels. The big names frantically jostle one another as though they were playing “Going to Jerusalem”—with Dialogue Writers Ben Hecht and Moss Hart and Song Writer Cole Porter the first to be done out of chairs.

For all that, The Seven Lively Arts is quite a show. It has, to begin with, the finest comedienne on the stage today, Beatrice Lillie. Back to Broadway after five years abroad, but saddled with unworthy material, Actress Lillie performs one of the greatest feats of theatrical alchemy on record. It is just too bad that her satiric and high-comedy gifts are devoted to such smarty songs and Winter Gardenish sketches.

The similarly chilling material given Comic Bert Lahr and Patter Merchant Doc Rockwell leaves them no choice but to freeze with it. Although Ballerina Alicia Markova rises above an unexciting Stravinsky ballet to display her dazzling technique, she misses the final magic of her dancing. Benny Goodman, as usual, toots his clarinet with equal skill in a hot ensemble and a classical solo.

A lush assortment of girls, much bright costuming and some stylish Norman Bel-Geddes sets give The Seven Lively Arts its fine as well as foolish moments of display. Best moment: a spirited extravaganza celebrating Producer Rose’s past glories (Jumbo, the Aquacade, Carmen Jones)—a fetching but futile attempt of the Rose to outbloom the Lillie.

For pint-sized, 45-year-old Billy Rose, The Seven Lively Arts is merely one more exhibit in a great glass-enclosed Hall of Showmanship already crowded with displays. Billy today is Broadway’s most spectacular if least likely-looking impresario, in whose brashness, love of effect, and shameless pursuit of publicity lie real daring, an instinct for the effective, a canny knowledge of the public.

One secret of Rose’s success is that whatever he produces makes a good story long before it makes a good show. Jumbo promised to bring the circus to the theater, and Carmen Jones the opera (in blackface, too). The first Aquacade, in Cleveland (“I’ll use Lake Erie for a stage and Canada as a backdrop”), was going to turn a swimming meet into a musicomedy. The second Aquacade, at the New York World’s Fair, starred Eleanor Holm, whom —just as soon as Fanny Brice divorced him—Rose was going to marry. But for the war, Rose would probably have gone through with his sky show—”a chorus of 64 planes,” the orchestra in one captive blimp, a glee club in another, and “70,000 spectators” on the ground.

Such stunts succeed because they are more than ballyhoo. Rose is compared interminably with Barnum, but unlike Barnum he does not play the public for a sucker; he gives his customers their money’s worth. The World’s Fair Aquacade, as Rose said, “spelled the death of the 25¢ peep show by giving good entertainment for 15¢ more.” And Rose is never afraid of splurging. He casts whole bakeries upon the waters, knowing that the more bread there is, the more dough it contains.

Shorthand to Songs. The career of Billy Rose, who began life as William Samuel Rosenberg, has always been eventful. Born on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, the son of a man “who, when people were doing passementerie, he handled fringe,” Billy made the high-school track team by learning to jump the gun without detection, became a shorthand whiz and stenographer for Barney Baruch (“Baruch is still the only idol in my book”). But he aimed far higher, precipitantly invaded Tin Pan Alley. There, writing the lyrics for such song hits as Barney Google, Million Dollar Baby, Rainbow Round My Shoulder, he was soon making as much as $60,000 a year.

From Tin Pan Alley to Broadway was an easy right turn and ft om there Rose went on to operating all over the map: in Manhattan with a succession of nightclubs (Casino de Paree, Casa Mañana, the still flourishing Diamond Horseshoe), at the Centennial Fair in Fort Worth (at a wage of $1,000 a day, at San Francisco’s, Cleveland’s and bushing’s fairs. The Aquacade alone netted him $2,000,000 after taxes.

Titian to Kaufman. He and his wife Eleanor Holm have a 55-acre estate at Mt. Kisco, N.Y., a $200,000 town house containing fancy bathtubs, $500,000 worth of Titians, Rubens, Holbeins, Daumiers, Utrillos and El Grecos. The house is virtually his office, and a dressing gown his usual business suit. “Billy,” commented a friend, “probably spends more time in his bedroom than any other well person.” The house is also the scene of dinner parties which are “cast as carefully” as his shows and which star Baruch, George S. Kaufman, Moss Hart, Cole Porter.

A lavish spender, Rose is also a tough bargainer. “Only a sucker,” he once remarked of picture-buying, “pays the price asked.” Accused of being “slow with a buck,” Rose retorted: “Sure, but do you know anybody who is faster with a hundred thousand?”

Bottles to Chairs. The real Billy Rose, though not hostile to glory, is anything but fantastic. He is a shrewd, hardheaded fellow who snaps off the lights over his Old Masters when he leaves the room. But he produces for adventure as well as profit. “In six months the Diamond Horseshoe makes all the money I’m allowed to earn in a year, so I will either vegetate and let ivy grow on my legs, or try to do something worth-while.” Hollywood does not interest him: “It’s fine for 15 days; the 16th day I start throwing empty gin bottles out of the window.”

For years, Billy says, he has refused anyone “the privilege of putting a penny” in his ventures. “I am more comfortable on my own. Top stars are problem children, and I am reconciled to being an emotional janitor.” But lately he has been happiest when he could get away from it all and concentrate on fitting up his new offices. “A Chippendale chair,” he remarks, “can’t talk back.”