Not So Dim

Laid out cold the year before, Broadway jumped nimbly to its feet this past season. With playwrights less paralyzed by the war, and the public less panicky, quality rose and box office soared. Offering the fewest new productions of any modern season, 1942-43 achieved the highest percentage of successes (22 out of 57) in Broadway history.

Of the 22, only one--The Eve of St. Mark--dealt seriously with the war; only three others--The Patriots, Harriet and Tomorrow the World--dealt seriously with anything. Entertainment held the field. Thornton Wilder's cockeyed The Skin of Our Teeth started ten thousand arguments, sold a quarter of a million seats and won the Pulitzer Prize. Oklahoma!, musicomedy's least orthodox offering in years, was also its most charming and successful. As Rosalinda, Johann Strauss's 6g-year-old, waltz-drenched Die Fledermaus became a surprise smash.

Broadway's threatened manpower shortage never became acute--even among chorus boys. But the theater lost several first-string critics to the war (the Times's Brooks Atkinson, Herald Tribune's Richard Watts Jr., World-Telegram's John Mason Brown, Sun's Richard Lockridge).

Hollywood did its heaviest backing in years, its heaviest buying in history: 20th Century-Fox paid an estimated $300,000 for The Eve of St. Mark, $265,000 for Something for the Boys; Warner Bros, advanced $250,000 against all profits on This Is the Army, paid $250,000 outright for Dark Eyes, The Doughgirls; Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer $260,000 for Without Love. Columnist Leonard Lyons quoted Hollywood's Nunnally Johnson: "All the film companies got together and agreed not to pay less than $250,000 for any play." With gas rationed, Broadway expects a terrific summer. Cracked Walter Winchell: "There is talk that Harold Ickes' picture will soon replace Edwin Booth's in all the actors' clubs."

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