New Play in Manhattan

If Booth Had Missed-- Playwright Arthur Goodman has chosen to imagine that a Negro porter knocked up John Wilkes Booth's arm just as he entered the Ford's Theatre box to shoot Abraham Lincoln.-- Thereafter Honest Abe is beset by venomous political intrigue, chief movers in which are club-footed Thaddeus Stevens, treacherous Secretary of War Stanton and complacently egotistical Ulysses Simpson Grant.

The playwright has drawn considerably on what actually happened to Vice President Andrew Johnson for his subsequent material. Lincoln is villainously impeached, tried for treason. In a genuinely exciting last act, he defends himself before the bar of the Senate in a trial conducted by Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase, whose judicial behavior is a good shade in favor of Lincoln. It takes 19 votes to save the President, and your scalp is in deed a tough one if it fails to tingle when the deciding vote is about to be cast. High praise goes to Playwright Good man, whose piece won a little theatre tournament last year, for an ably conceived and ably executed feat of historical imagination. Praise too is due a cast which for the most part performs convincingly, and especially Daniel Poole as the Christlike Emancipator and John Nicholson as the wily Thaddeus Stevens.

Educational Institution

"My inclination for natural history," explains Professor William Heckler of Manhattan's 42nd Street Flea Circus, "led me into the business." An old city ordinance led the Professor, the proprietor of the freak show in which he operates, and the impresarios of several neighboring burlesque shows into police court last week. Complainant was the 42nd St. Property Owners and Merchants Association which claimed that its community was rapidly developing into a rowdy midway. Shooting galleries, "men only" movies and pitchmen have brought the block to sad estate.

In court Professor Heckler pleaded that his was neither "a tragedy, comedy, opera, ballet or farce," but an educational institution which has not always been on 42nd Street. He used to play to carnival and fair audiences. For 15-c- you can witness an eight-minute performance of Pediculi which the Professor claims is the only one of its kind on earth. He also is willing to roll up his sleeves and exhibit his small performers' pasturage.

Flea Cousin Charlie has been taught to push about an infinitesimal ball. Flea Napoleon trudges along with a small wire cannon in tow. Flea Reuben tugs a roller. Prompted with a bit of broom straw, Napoleon, Reuben and Cousin Charlie are encouraged to race. There are, in addition, six dancing fleas. Rudolf from Hapsburg operates a tiny carousel, but one suspects that the Professor's favorite is "Caesar and his Roman chariot!"

*By tradition Assassin Booth, as he leaped from Lincoln's box to the stage, cried "Sic Semper Tyrannis." One E. V. McGinnis of St. Louis whose great grandfather was Booth's physician and whose grandfather was sitting in the Ford's Theatre audience on the evening of April 14, 1865, claims that what Booth really said was: "I'm sick--send for McGinnis!"

/-Above: Chief Justice Chase. Vice President Johnson.

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