Really Fantastic

The blonde's shapely body was pushed slowly against the whirring circular saw. In the orchestra pit, the musicians shielded their instruments and cowered under sheets of butcher paper. The saw ripped menacingly through the girl's clothes, bit into her midriff, began to spew what looked exactly like blood and entrails all over the stage and into the audience. Women shrieked and fainted. Finally, with the blonde all too realistically sawed in half, Argentine Illusionist Richiardi Jr. invited the spectators up for a closer look. Hundreds trooped onstage, stared at the gory shambles and the blonde (still intact), and left happy.

Richiardi's tricky illusion act ruined a curtain in The Bronx's remarkable Puerto Rico Theater. It also cost the management dry-cleaning bills for the "blood"-stained clothes of some 20 customers. But it helped boost the week's receipts to $40,000--more than any show but Kiss Me, Kate and As the Girls Go grossed on Broadway last week. The Bronx's big-money playhouse is a magnet for one of New York's lowest-income groups--the growing city-within-a-city of 230,000 Puerto Ricans.

Keep It Clean. The Latins from Manhattan (and sometimes from points as distant as Bethlehem, Pa.) queue up at the former fight arena with their families and their lunches, eager to pay admissions from $1.20 to $2 to see their favorites in three-a-day vaudeville shows. The magician who sawed the lady in half was merely a fillip to the Latin taste; the big draws are such stars of Mexico and South America as Cinemactors Jorge Negrete and Pedro Armendariz and Singer Libertad Lamarque.

Impresario Carlos Montalban, a lean, mustachioed Mexican actor-promoter (and older brother of Cinemactor Ricardo Montalban), pays his big names upwards of $10,000 a week, plus their fares from Latin America. Regardless of how much stage blood is spattered around, he woos the family trade by keeping the shows clean. (Backstage, four large signs remind the performers that the audience is "very respectable and religious.")

Bravos & Whistles. The spectators, who can shake the theater with bravos and oles, are inclined to riot when displeased; but Montalban, who keeps plenty of spirit of ammonia on hand for emergencies, says the police have been "very helpful." In their enthusiasm, the aficionados disdain such pallid Yankee conventions as waiting at the stage door for autographs. When they wanted the signature of Mexican Cowboy Singer Negrete, hundreds of them piled right up on the stage. But they are avid practitioners of the U.S. custom of whistling in approval. The piercing whistles once drove a singer to tears when Manager Montalban forgot to explain beforehand that this was not the traditional Latin catcalling.

Two competitors have folded since the Puerto Rico opened last May. Says Montalban : "There just isn't enough money for more than one of us." Carrying the theory a step farther, he has decided that his big shows are too much of a drain on his customers' resources, week in & week out. He has just begun a policy of alternating three weeks of Latin movies with a week's "live" presentation. "Now," says he, "the stage shows will really be fantastic."

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