Purer Piping

The pied piper of Hamelin was a dismal flop compared to the modern underworld radio show. One day four years ago several young matrons at the Women's Club in suburban Maplewood, N. J. fell to talking about this problem, a great worry to many a U. S. mother who has observed the intense preoccupation of U. S. moppets with the cheap and sensational entertainment provided for them by films, newspaper strips and particularly the radio. Said brown-haired, brown-eyed Mrs. Dorothy L. McFadden, mother of James & Jean and wife of James L. McFadden, export consultant and amateur sketcher: ''Why can't we produce decent entertainment ourselves?" The answer was a series of children's programs (music, marionets, etc.) given by Manhattan professionals. Admission: 10-c-. So enthusiastic was the reception that the next year Junior Programs, with Mrs. McFadden as executive director, began to send professional troupes to entertain the children of other towns. By last week Junior Programs, Inc. had played to over 500,000 children, had started a new season during which five companies, performing operas, ballets and plays, are expected to reach nearly 1,000,000 more youngsters in 29 States and Canada. Junior Programs thinks that proves there is a big place for purer piping.

With Saul Lancourt, former assistant director of the Chautauqua Opera Association, as production manager, and with professional adult actors, dancers and singers, Junior Programs this season is producing two operas, Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel and Rimsky-Korsakov's Bumble Bee Prince; two ballets with accompanying narrative, Pinocchio and The Princess and the Swineherd, written for this project; one play, The Reward of the Sun God, by John Louw Nelson. Junior Programs' repertoire also includes marionets, monologists, films, musicians. By far the most popular are the ballets.

It costs about $20,000 a year (met by private contributions) to run Junior Programs, Inc. A company of artists gets from $200 to $400 for a performance. Local parent-teacher associations, boards of education or other groups sponsor the performances, put them on in schools or rented halls. All this makes it possible to give children top-rank musical and dramatic shows at 10-c- to 25-c-. The companies play an average of five times a week, frequently to overflow audiences. In Gallipolis, Ohio (pop. 7,100) a ballet drew 1,500 children from all the countryside. In Hartford's (Conn.) Bushnell Memorial Auditorium last year 3,300 children filled every seat to hear an opera.

Junior Programs ties up its entertainment with school work by providing schools with materials for related art, music & dancing activities. Elated by children's response to her shows, Mrs. McFadden last week blamed adults for depraving their children's taste so that when they grow up they "patronize the most inane motion pictures, vaudeville and burlesque shows. If left alone a child will instinctively enjoy beauty and good drama. It is the adult who makes a disparaging remark about the dullness of opera and makes fun of so-called 'highbrow' music and the dance, who influences the child to adopt the same attitude."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.