The Power of the Critics

After only 28 performances on Broadway, Only in America, a comedy based on the life of Harry Golden, bestselling author (Only in America, For 2-c- Plain) and editor (the bimonthly Carolina Israelite), closed and faded into oblivion. Taking sad note of the closing in the current Israelite, Golden speaks on the power of the Broadway critics, whose predominantly unfavorable reviews helped kill the show:

"It might seem that bad reviews would result in an intense bitterness. But the opposite is true. [The] critics represent our last bastion of integrity. They can neither be bullied nor seduced into writing good reviews. The one wonderful thing about the reviews is that you don't have to wait long. A play takes up a year of heartache to get to Broadway, but the critics render the decision within an hour and 15 minutes, and it is a major decision, one from which there is little appeal. The theater is probably the only business in the world where a major decision is made so quickly, with so little fuss, bother or delay, and with so much celerity and honesty. The success of a play is a contingent thing, contingent on those seven [New York] critics. Yet I do not want it any other way."

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