Substitute for Mother

Seven nights a week the dusky, barnlike basement of Manhattan's 44th Street Theater is crammed and crawling with pleasure-seekers. No liquor is served, but there is dancing to hot name bands, with pretty show girls and such movie stars as Bette Davis and Janet Gaynor waiting to be picked off as partners. On the walls are gay murals by the theater's top scene designers--Jo Mielziner, Donald Oenslager, Raoul Pene du Bois, Gertrude Lawrence, Eddie Cantor, the dancing De Marcos, the Quiz Kids with Tallulah Bankhead as Quizmaster, are part of the endless floor show. The food is good, and Producer Brock Pemberton, Novelist Carl Van Vechten, Actor Sam Jaffe are among the busboys. And the whole thing is free.

But only men in the uniforms of the United Nations are admitted. Established by the American Theater Wing War Service, the Stage Door Canteen represents the joint efforts of the whole entertainment field (stage, cinema, vaudeville, radio, music) to give boys in the services a better time than they could get cruising through town and paying through their noses. With hundreds of people cheerfully providing time, skill and materials, a $20,000 reconstruction job was done on the theater basement for less than $300.

Opening at five, closing down tight at midnight, the Canteen in its first week entertained 8,800 boys, last week entertained 14,000. In its month's history, it has only once removed the welcome sign, and then for five minutes: after 2,300 boys had clogged the place to asphyxiation.

High point in entertainment is from 6 to 7 p.m., when the big musicals rotate parts of their shows; after that, there is special entertainment at intervals all evening. A big draw is Blonde Colette Lyons, who tosses her torso around, shouting lines like: "I'm a sport with the boys at the Fort" or "I'm the toast of the boys at the Post." Anything raw on the performers' part is out. Betweenwhiles, the boys dance, or sit eating and drinking (generally milk).

Though there are about 50 to 100 show-girl "hostesses" a night, there are also an increasing number of "senior hostesses" (older actresses like Antoinette Perry and Constance Collier), because the Canteen has found that lots of the kids are skirt-shy, only feel at home with substitutes for Mother. For all hostesses there are two ironclad rules: They must be members of the entertainment professions (or the daughter or wife of a member), and they may not leave the place with a service man.

So far, except for an occasional brush between soldiers and sailors, there has been no roughhousing at the Canteen. But in case there is, it has the advice of the Army morale branch as to what to do: "Play The Star-Spangled Banner. The boys in uniform must stand at attention or get thrown in the clink."

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