Clarion Call

The American Artists Professional League, long chafing at inroads of foreign artists on their trade, offered a $10 prize for a patriotic U. S. art slogan. Last week Commercial Artist Valentine Sandberg won the $10 but the League made a few changes. He had put his clarion call in a design of crossed artists' brushes. The League added a compass, a modeling tool and a crayon to symbolize all its members. And it changed Artist Sandberg's slogan, "Choose American Art" to "I Am For American Art," the design from a rectangle to an oval, the inscription "American Artists" to "The American Artists Professional League."

Biggest Theatre

For months Manhattan artists have hungrily watched the International Music Hall in the northwest corner of Rockefeller Center, first unit to approach a state of polish and finish. Hearing rumors of a splendiferous interior, they waited for jobs. In April the architects announced: "Preference will be given the American artist." Last week U. S. decorator Donald Deskey was picked to design the interior of International Music Hall, world's largest theatre.

First an architect in California, then a painter in Chicago, then an interior decorator in Manhattan, Decorator Deskey is credited with the introduction of tubular metal furniture to the U. S. He promised "sane modern design" for International Music Hall, to be used for vaudeville under Samuel Lionel ("Roxy") Rothafel's direction.* Already a score of artists were planning details.

By late autumn Manhattanites will be able to enter the world's biggest theatre, five stories high, spired by 26 stories of Radio-Keith-Orpheum enterprises. In the domed grand foyer they will be faced by Muralist Ezra Winter's 60-ft. canvas showing the Fountain of Youth planted by God on a mountaintop, ringed by chasms. This canvas will follow the sweep of a huge marble and bronze stairway. In the auditorium a gigantic sunburst will explode above the proscenium arch. Structural glass will be pocked with mosaics of cork, murals of linoleum. The wall coverings will be pigskin. Tube aluminum furniture will be upholstered in hairhide. There will be 16-sided lounging rooms with copper ceilings.

Noteworthy in International Music Hall is the use of modern industrial materials with which Donald Deskey has always been potent. Out of Bakelite, chromium-plated steel, pyroxalin, aluminum, linoleum, he proposes to create "an effect of splendor and magnificence."

* Not waiting for the new world's biggest theatre to open, the old world's biggest theatre, the Roxy cinema palace in Manhattan, last week closed for three weeks. Lavish stage shows had failed to attract the weekly $75,000 necessary for profit. When it reopens, less lavishly, its 5,920 seats will be outnumbered by International Music Hall's 6,000-odd. It may forfeit the name of Roxy to another of the Rockefeller Center theatres.

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