Customers Wanted

When dressy, horsy Grover Aloysius Whalen unveiled his $157,000,000 New York World's Fair last April, he figured that out-of-town customers would be storming its gates by July 1. Instead of a Big Push he got an attendance so low that he was moved fortnight ago to start making reduced rates (reduced parking fees, bargain admissions for large groups) to fairgoers. Last week he:

> Cut the 75-c--admission price to 40-c- after 9:30 p.m. (a sop to grousing concessionaires who had demanded a 25-c- fee).

> Offered a bargain week-end ticket giving $2.25 worth of admission, food and entertainment for $1 to adults, 50-c- to children.

> Put on sale 1,000,000 combination books containing five admission, ten concession tickets. (Price, $3.75; value, $7.)

> Reduced the salaries of all Fair executives 10%.

> Fired 150 Fair police and 205 college-boy information cadets. (Irked by their dismissal, one cadet platoon waded through the two mirror pools from the Four Freedoms statues to the George Washington statue, indulged in horseplay.)

> Eliminated the fireworks and gas display from the fountain spectacle on the Lagoon of Nations.

> Tacitly admitted that his opening day attendance figure of 605,000 was loaded. (Corrected figure: 222,704 paid admissions, 38,938 passes. Error: 343,358.)

Responding to the Head Man's fillip, the groggy Fair perked up last week end to produce the largest Saturday crowd to date; 256,253 paid admissions. 55,247 passes. Led by New York City's violent little Mayor LaGuardia, over 70% of the visitors used the $1 bargain tickets.

Pleasing as those figures were to natty Grover Whalen, they still left him with a big fiscal headache. In twelve weeks attendance totaled some 14,700,000 (including almost 3,500,000 free admissions), about half what he had hoped for. He had forecast a $4,000,000 loss if only 40,000,000 people came to the Fair the first year, a $1,000,000 profit on 50,000,000. With three months to go, it appeared that he would be lucky to get 30,000,000. Tip-off on his Big Show's fiscal status was the market for its $27,829,500 of outstanding 4% debentures (5% paid off): the closing bid was 56.

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