Candy Under the Bed

Some of the steam was taken out of Billy Rose's pipe dreams last week. The Metropolitan Opera announced that it would be able to have a 1948-49 season after all, and without Billy's help. The season would start late--possibly not until the first of December--and be only 16 or 17 weeks long.

But this news didn't stop shrewd Showman Billy Rose from confiding, in the 195 papers that carry his column, what he would do to improve the Met. And some of his ideas were pretty sensible.

600 Tallulahs. If anyone thought Showman Billy intended to cure the Met by turning Mrs. Rose (onetime swimmer Eleanor Holm) into a Rhine maiden, as every wag east of San Francisco jumped to suggest, they had a surprise coming. Billy's first businesslike solution for management problems was to save part of last year's $220,000 loss by lopping off four of the Met's five managers. As for General Manager Edward Johnson, "the mess of red ink on your books ought to tell you that Eddie is badly miscast as bossman of a setup which features 600 Tallulah Bank-heads and a dozen John L. Lewises . . . [but] if he's used only as artistic director, he's well worth his keep."

Not worth their keep, to Showman Billy, were any of the Met's 38 directors: "Letting Belmont, Bliss, Colt, Dillon, Reed, Whitney, Winthrop et al. boss our most complicated entertainment venture is as daffy as letting Harpo Marx run U.S. Steel. In the old days . . . Otto Kahn and his contemporaries . . . were willing to pay for the privilege of making the Met their hobby . . . But today's directors have shown little facility with the fountain pen . . . they (should) hold one last meeting and fire themselves."

38 Chairs. Nobody could quarrel with Billy's replacements, if they could be had. "To the left of the chairman sits Arturo Toscanini . . . [then] Bernard M. Baruch ... as financial adviser . . . Around the big mahogany table are opera experts like [the Berkshire Festival's] Boris Goldovsky and [Manhattan's City Opera boss] Laszlo Halasz, theater men like Oscar Hammerstein II and Robert Edmond Jones." Others: Stage Directors Elia Kazan, Jose Ferrer, Rouben Mamoulian; Choreographers Agnes de Mille, Antony Tudor, Jerome Robbins. "Who would sit in the 37th [he meant the 38th] chair?

Well, you don't expect me to stand up all day, do you?"

On production, Billy had an idea that "is so simple that it's a cinch to be greeted with screams and derision." The cost of hauling scenery off to the warehouse, then hauling it back again two weeks later and putting it up, says Billy, is close to $4,000. "Why, then, wouldn't it be smart to present two operas a week instead of five or six? ... Why not play Carmen the first half of the week and, let's say, Der Rosenkavalier the second half? And ditto the rest of the operas in next season's repertory" . . . And when the season is over, "why not open the Opera House ... to operettas such as Porgy and Bess, Show Boat, Oklahoma! . . . There's [a] fundamental axiom of show business the Met . . . continues to overlook--a dark house doesn't make money."*

A Few Whistles. Then there were the performers themselves: "How come somebody doesn't. . . instruct certain of those hamfats in the ABCs of stage deportment? . . . 'Watching a love scene at the Met [wrote Billy, quoting a friend] is like seeing Gone With the Wind with Sydney Greenstreet playing Rhett Butler and Sophie Tucker as Scarlett O'Hara . . .' My suggestion is that we interview the fatsos one by one . . . and suggest they consult a doctor. Of course, great singers like Melchior and Traubel should be kept regardless of heft, but minor singers could be given a year's probation and told to get rid of that candy box under the bed--or else . . . Opera would be a lot more popular in this country if there were a few wolf whistles mixed in with the bravos."

* The Met rents out its house for eight weeks of ballet, but is dark 26 weeks out of the year.

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