Annual Report

All in all, Broadway could look back with greater pride on 1946-47 than on any other season since Pearl Harbor. There was no call to use the fancier adjectives; no forgetting a long procession of triteness and trash. But beyond a discernible increase in merit, there was a distinct effect of movement--of a theater aiming to get places, and not just by the same old routes.

Broadway could particularly pat its own back on three scores:

Drama. Eugene O'Neill's first play in twelve years, The Iceman Cometh, was second-rate O'Neill, but even so, added stature to the season. So did Another Part of the Forest, without being entirely first-rate Lillian Hellman. Meanwhile, a virtually unknown playwright, Arthur Miller, won the Drama Critics' award, with All My Sons.

Classics. Of 75 productions during 1946-47, an amazing 25 were revivals. But--considering that only a short while back exactly one classic reached Broadway in 23 months--it was good to see famous plays moved from shelf to stage in handfuls. Better yet, it was good to see many of the famous plays themselves--a glossy Lady Windermere's Fan, a lithe Volpone, a lively Androcles and the Lion, a lusty Cyrano, a truly brilliant Importance of Being Earnest.

Musicals were few but they were particularly adventurous and fresh. Finian's Rainbow and Brigadoon snubbed formulas while successfully serenading fantasy; and even such a flop as Beggars' Holiday had the courage of its confusions. Meanwhile, two generally effective musical plays, Street Scene and Gian-Carlo Menotti's The Medium, started battering down the partition between theater and opera.

But if Broadway's face was fuller, its pockets were emptier. A dozen hits were still riding high, but wartime spending had slumped, and peacetime expenses had soared. To raise the curtain on a show cost just about twice what it had only a few seasons back. The revival of Show Boat, one of the greatest Broadway grossers of all time, wound up last January some $150,000 in the red.

P: Biggest box-office during 1946-47: the previous season's Annie Get Your Gun.

P: Splashiest purse-denter: the musical Park Avenue ($198,000).

P: Sitting prettiest: Rodgers & Hammerstein, with a producer's haul from Annie Get Your Gun, Happy Birthday, John Loves Mary.

P: Heading the mourners' bench: the American Repertory Theater, flatter than a pancake after its first season.

Hollywood, after turning its pockets inside out during the war, spent less than $2 million for Broadway shows. Top sales: Christopher Blake ($300,000, plus extras) and Another Part of the Forest ($250,000, plus extras). Top dicker: Annie Get Your Gun ($650,000).

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