Feeble Pulse

Its playhouses and its audiences have been dwindling steadily for a generation, but Broadway likes to stake its survival on a romantic cliche: the theater is "the fabulous invalid" that never dies. By this summer the invalid had grown so feeble that a doctor was called in. For diagnosis and prescription, the League of New York Theatres (most of Manhattan's producers and playhouse operators) hired Public Relations Man Edward L. Bernays.

This week, in a bedside manner familiar to many an ailing big business, Expert Bernays was ready to tell the patient all. "If the rate of decline continues," he warned at the outset, "in a decade or two we may expect to see the legitimate theater in New York disappear completely . . . [But] in spite of everything, the American people like the theater more than ever before, if it meets their desires and needs . . ."

Diagnosis. To get at the theater's internal "maladjustments" and its troubles with the public, Bernays' high-powered firm had done a six-week survey. There were interviews in all branches of the theater; 400 "personal depth" interviews in upper and middle income groups in nine selected cities; 5,000 mailed questionnaires to key individuals in 27 cities.

Out of it all came a diagnosis that was news to no one: the theater suffers from a tangled complex of ills, overwhelmingly economic, with most theater people ready to put the blame on the other fellow. Chief causes of high ticket prices: the high costs of theater rentals, sets, props, costumes, labor and the fumbling inefficiency of some producers.

Prescription. Bernays offered no cureall, but he mapped what is probably the most ambitious and detailed strategy yet designed to lift the theater's prestige and boost its business. If ever made to work on Broadway--a stronghold of unenlightened self-interest--his plan would turn a collection of hit-hungry gamblers into an efficiently self-regulated industry with uniform standards.

Among Bernays' recommendations (which fill a fat notebook): a manual for producers with pooled know-how on the most economical production techniques; standardized financing and accounting; an industry clinic in promotion and advertising; training courses in behavior for box office personnel, ushers, concessionaires and house managers; a credo pledging the theater to fair dealing, courtesy, comfort, efficient operation--with enforcement of ethical practices by the Better Business Bureau. Bernays would also harness women's clubs, youth groups, universities, cultural leaders, etc. into a vast public relations campaign for the theater.

For the first time in a long siege, the fabulous invalid had a choice: to take its medicine, however bitter the taste, or to go on flirting with death.

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