The Boys from Syracuse

Out of a cubbyhole office in Manhattan last week came news of the biggest deal in theatrical real estate since the purchase of land for the Radio City Music Hall. The deal: Shubert Brothers had bought the plot between Manhattan’s 44th and 45th Streets—just west of Times Square—on which sit four of the busiest Broadway theaters (the Shubert, Broadhurst, Booth and Plymouth).

For the reported price of $3,500,000, paid to the 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 history.

Secrets In the City. The sons of a Syracuse peddler, 73-year-old Lee and 68-year-old Jacob J. (for nothing) Shubert were already stage-struck in 1885 when an older brother, Sam, got a job as an extra with a visiting road company at $1 a week. When they found that program boys got $1.50 a week, the three brothers switched to the commercial side, and in a few years were leasing theaters—and putting on shows—in Rochester, Albany, Troy, Utica and Buffalo as well as Syracuse.

With their profits, plus $30,000 from a haberdasher friend, they went to New York—and ran up against potent Klaw & Erlanger, whose syndicate then controlled all New York bookings, plus everything of importance on the road. Though the Shuberts did their best to make friends with the press, some New York papers, dependent on K. & E. ads, panned the brothers and their shows. Libeling a Shubert, scoffed one paper, “would be as cruel as unnecessary.”

This, after all their good intentions, destroyed their faith in newspapers. It forced them for a while to put out their own paper (the New York Review) to get publicity, and made them secretive ever after. In 1905, Sam, the acknowledged leader of the family, died when the train he was riding ran into a carload of dynamite; Lee and Jake have never traveled together since. But Jake and Lee went on to fight with drama critics, bar them from theaters, and are said to have issued a manifesto that they wanted to be called “the Messrs. Shubert,” not “Jake and Lee.”

Money in the Sticks. The Messrs. Shubert also went on building or buying control of theaters across the U.S. To fill them, they shrewdly concentrated on operettas, suitable for road shows. They did not depend on the high-priced Broadway casts, but on low-salaried, second-rate singers. The Shuberts often had as many as 20 operettas (The Student Prince, Blossom Time, Maytime, etc.) touring the U.S. In one season they cleared $850,000 on The Student Prince alone.

By 1929, they controlled an empire of theatrical property worth $400 million. It crashed in the Depression.

In 1933, Lee and Jake doggedly formed a new company which bought the old firm’s assets for $400,000, and began building their present smaller but much less vulnerable empire. Completely self-sufficient, it includes a script company (which owns more than 1,000 shows), a music publishing company, a scenery-and-costume company, and the Trebuhs (Shubert spelled backwards) Realty Co., which, with the Shubert Theater Corp., owns 16 of the 32 legitimate theaters in New York, owns or controls 21 outside.

From his twelve-by-twelve office in the Shubert Theater, Lee (Broadway’s most famous “bachelor” until his secret wedding came out when he was sued recently for divorce) manages the Manhattan dominion of the empire, while Jake tends more to the colonies. They often work together on producing, have turned out as many as 16 shows in one season. Their formula: “All plays have to have love interest. If you have no love interest, you have no play.”

But as their booking arm has tightened its hold, the Shuberts’ producing arm has become almost completely lax. This year they have produced only one show. They prefer—and are usually able—to fill their theaters with hits by other producers, turn out their own shows only when there are not enough to go around. Now, with theaters scarce, they get rentals of 35% of gross receipts, and up. With all their houses occupied by hits or near-misses, Shubert theaters are taking in money at the rate of $60 million a year.