$2,000,000 Wingspread

Any Broadway playgoer can spot a hit by the line at the box office. For the record, Billboard has denned a hit as a show that runs for more than 100 performances. Last week, by the formal definition, an overdressed underdog of a revue called All for Love (TIME, Jan. 31) became the costliest, floppingest "hit" in U.S. theatrical history.

Rarely has a show reached its 100th-performance milestone in spite of a hostile press. All for Love is rarer still: it got there in spite of an apathetic public. Its only impetus has come from a stubbornly stagestruck millionaire named Anthony Brady Farrell, an angel with the largest wingspread ever seen on Broadway.* In the year since Farrell took a leave from his Albany chain factory, he has spent more than $2,000,000 plunging where others fear to tread.

Cash Deal. A slight, weatherbeaten man of 49, Farrell realized a longtime ambition last season when he got a chance to put up all the money for the musicomedy Hold It!. Most of Manhattan's reviewers panned the show, but Farrell, who knows what he likes, wanted to keep it going. Six weeks and $300,000 later, he made his own odd diagnosis: the show's theater (where Call Me Mister had rolled up a hit run) was no good.

That could be fixed. Angel Farrell paid a lump-sum $1,300,000 for the Warner Theater ("a cash deal is best") and closed Hold It! until he could reopen it in his own property. He shelled out $200,000 to make the house the town's plushiest and, with its silk-damasked walls, probably the gaudiest. When contractual snarls developed over transplanting Hold It!, Farrell switched from musicomedy to revue, signed up Comics Bert Wheeler and Paul and Grace Hartman, tossed in another $250,000 and put on All for Love. It was a critical flop; the New York Times''s Brooks Atkinson headlined his review: FARRELL'S FOLLY.

Renewed Faith. Without stopping the show, Farrell gradually had the whole thing restaged, scene by scene. Heartened by letters from some of his customers, he asked the reviewers to come back and take another look. Three of them felt up to it, but the verdict came out just about the same. At losses ranging from $15,000 to $23,000 a week, Farrell, who has watched almost every one of the 100 performances, stuck to his conviction that his show was the best musical on Broadway. As a visitor to Manhattan, he has seen every musical since 1914. Rich and corny All for Love, reminiscent of them all, is a middle-aged small-towner's nostalgic dream of a big-time show.

"I don't give a darn about money," says Impresario Farrell, grandson of Util-itycoon ($85 million) Anthony Nicholas Brady. "There's no sense making a lot of it. You just have to give it away in taxes." But promoters and crackpots who have set snares for some of Tony Farrell's ready cash have misjudged him: "I'm not a soft touch. These guys around here think I am, but I know what the heck I'm doing."

While his employees work hard, in a mental state that resembles a guilt complex, Farrell feels occasional doubts. Recently he told an interviewer he would quit Broadway when the current adventure was ended. But last week, when holiday crowds pepped up the box-office take, he took on a new determination to keep the show going. His taste in entertainment was improving, too: he had seen the new musical hit, South Pacific, and it had "renewed my faith in the theater." Now he wants to do a show as good as that.

* Surpassing Texas Oilman Edgar B. Davis, who, some 20 years ago, poured $1,500,000 into a dismal play called The Ladder (789 performances) until he ended up giving all tickets away. Not comparable are Abie's Irish Rose (2,327 performances) and Tobacco Road (3,182 performances); both defied the critics with their lengthy runs--but eager customers put up the money.

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