The Show Doesn't Go On

All for one and one for all And God be with us all.

Singing this plaintively courageous hymn, members of Equity, the fledgling actors' union, walked off their stages 41 years ago, spearheaded by Marie Dressier and Ethel Barrymore, and paraded through a blacked-out Broadway. Their demand: the right to bargain collectively with their producers. The producers capitulated after 30 days, during which New Yorkers consoled themselves with flicks, pickup vaudeville and impromptu sidewalk skirmishes. Last week, once again, Broadway theaters were deserted, and Shubert Alley was so dark that one could not tell a producer from a philanthropist. At the end of an artistically and financially dreary season, New York's commercial theater was shut down in an eruption of Broadway's economic anarchy.

At the Hotel Edison, Equity was in session. Poised, ponytailed children from The Sound of Music, clutching lap dogs, mingled with Negroes from Raisin in the Sun and Orientals from A Majority of One. Sari-draped Vivien Leigh held court, apparently trying to play a curious mixture of Cleopatra and Joan of Arc. Equity's George Nicolau recalled the 1919 strike: "Let your answer be now as it was then--Equity!" But hardly anyone remembered the old marching hymn. Shrunken in size. Equity is now "just a cut above the horseshoers" (as one labor organizer cracked), and for years has been quick to compromise or concede. Trying to make up past weakness, the actors now want:

P: A weekly pay raise of $16.50 for minimum salaries, lowered in bargaining to $11.50 (for the first year of the contract). The producers offer $6.50.

P: A pension plan, with the producers to contribute 7% of their payroll over a three-year period, abruptly lowered in bargaining to 1% in the first year, 4% by 1965. The producers agree to the principle, but want to postpone the start of payments, offer a maximum of 2%.

Prima-donna manners were rampant on both sides. Equity Chief Counsel Herman Cooper (President Ralph Bellamy was busy in Hollywood, playing F.D.R. in the movie version of Sunrise at Campobello) announced that the union would not go on strike, would simply call evening "meetings" of various casts, shutting down a different show every night. When the union started this "legal harassment" with The Tenth Man, the producers regarded it as a strike, closed all Broadway shows.

The mood was somber and the talk was tough. Barred from their dressing rooms, actors milled aimlessly around outside their theaters signing autographs. A sound truck sent out by the producers' League of New York Theaters drew up in a darkened street to proclaim "We hope this Equity strike ends soon." The actors, who call it a lockout, shouted back, "Lie! Lie!" Perched on the stoop of the Playhouse, Anne Bancroft announced: "We're the actors--the smiling ones. The worried-looking ones over there are the producers." Said Raymond Massey: "I'm sick of people saying to actors 'The show must go on,' as though actors, like policemen or firemen, were vital to public service. What about the stagehands, lolling down below, playing pinochle, while the actors--making less money--give their guts?"

Countered British Director Peter Glenville: "Equity is trying to bring security to an area necessarily very insecure. If you want security and comfort, it's a question of 'Don't put your daughter on the stage, Mrs. Worthington!' "

Equity said its demands would cost individual producers only $50 to $173 a week next season, could easily be absorbed in current budgets, which, said the union, are warmly padded. The producers, on the other hand, insisted that they simply could not afford to tack a single penny onto already excessive production costs. Amid all the argument, the playgoer is sure of only one thing: he pays more for tickets than ever before. In 1940, seat prices ranged from 50-c- to a maximum (for musicals) of $4.40. Today's top: $9.90. Where does this money go?

Actors get as little as 12% of the gross, but the total may rise to 30% of a successful show if an important star has a percentage deal. One out of every ten actors on Broadway is a "minimum player," earning the flat Equity minimum of $103.50 a week. Extras, who do not count as minimum players, earn even less--$52 a week. Rising young star Anne Bancroft earns as much as $2,000 a week. Veteran Melvyn (The Best Man) Douglas, who works for 10% of the gross, is guaranteed $2,500 a week.

Crafts and affiliated unions get between 5% and 20% (for musicals). Powerful and highly organized, these unions have been more successful than Equity in boosting minimum wages and benefits, improving working conditions for their members. Weekly minimums range from $104 for grips (theatrical stevedores) and curtain men, to $155.50 for musicians. $247.19 for pressagents.

Authors get a percentage of the gross up to 10%. (A few claim considerably higher slices.)

Producers may get as much as 50% of the net profits, much of the remainder going to backers. Broadway production can be immensely profitable, but the risks are high. This season 53 productions made it to New York, of which 40 were failures, losing a total of $5.2 million: according to the producers. This season's 13 hits have so far earned a clear profit of only $244,000, by the producers' reckoning.

Landlords usually get between 25% and 30% of the weekly gross. This is an enormous slice, and many producers and actors insist that the theater owners are the real villains of the situation. When Landlord John Shubert complained that the Equity tactics represented a threat to culture, one New York columnist remarked: "That amounts to Attila the Hun denouncing a threat to Christian civilization."

By week's end, negotiations were continuing, but both sides were in a pet and positions had hardened. Producers called the actors "unstable transient workers" and "gypsies." Since many of them profess liberal ideals, their position was uncomfortable. Wrote New York Post Columnist Murray Kempton: "The producers include a number of passionately devoted liberals beneath whose Stevenson buttons beat hearts that click like taxi meters."

Meanwhile, the Broadway area was unnaturally--and refreshingly--quiet in the evenings; taxis were available, and in restaurants the lack of theater crowds caused some waiters to make their first pathetic attempts at being polite. Movies and off-Broadway shows were booming. Perhaps the biggest reason to settle the shutdown quickly is that, if it goes on too long. New Yorkers might possibly discover that they can survive without Broadway.

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