Parrot's Screech

With the exception of radio and the airplane, television has received more ballyhoo than any other invention in recent history. The first attempt to utilize television as a medium of theatrical entertainment occurred last week in a cinema house on Broadway.

A block away, in the lobby of the Guild Theatre, Actors Franchot Tone and Margeret Barker spoke into a microphone lines from their roles in The House of Connelly (TIME, Oct. 12). The audience in the Broadway Theatre expected to hear and to see Actors Tone and Barker simultaneously, by television.

In the middle of the exhibition, a tube in the television apparatus became overheated. It was necessary to wait 15 min. while it cooled off. Actors Tone and Barker were then seen and heard. What they said was clearly audible but their faces flickered vaguely on the screen; it was hard to tell which was which and what they were doing. Later, a Central American parrot was somewhat more successfully televised, screeching hoarsely at mention of Prohibition. Theatre-owner B. B. Moss made a speech explaining that the purpose of the performance was "to show the progress in television rather than the finished article." Observers wondered whether television's progress, as shown, was not such as to make its often heralded arrival seem more distant than ever. The apparatus used in the Broadway Theatre was provided by Sanabria Television Corp., which coincidentally increased its capital stock from 5,000 to 500,000 shares.

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