The Theater: Curtains

It takes a heap of money to put a show into a Broadway house, and a heap more to keep it there. A smash-hit musical like The Pajama Game (TIME, May 24) cost a relatively low $190,000 to get started but it has to gross $31,000 a week to break even. Fanny cost its producers $265,000, has a weekly break-even figure of $34,000 and must run 17 weeks to pay off its cost. In Fanny’s case, however, there is little worry—its weekly gross so far is a whopping $66,000.

But there is no longer any such thing as a small Broadway hit, or a small total investment. Last week The Traveling Lady, which made a star out of Actress Kim Stanley (TIME, Nov. 8), shut down after 30 performances, although it cost only $55,000 to capitalize. All Summer Long, which had a modest advance sale on the basis of Playwright Robert (Tea and Sympathy) Anderson’s prestige, closed a week earlier after 60 performances and a loss of some $65,000. The season’s first casualty, the Theatre Guild’s Home Is the Hero, was financed at $40,000, cost a carefully budgeted $26,000 to open, lost $32,000, ran for 60 performances, closed.

In Chicago, Actress Jean Arthur, after nine weeks in an $80,000 traveling production of Shaw’s Saint Joan, developed a severe virus infection, flew to New York without telling the management before hand. The show closed at a loss to the producers of $100,000.