Stage-Struck Shrewdie

Few first-nighters recognized him, but the rumpled character caught in the crush at last week's opening of Walter and Jean Kerr's musicomedy Goldilocks (see THEATER) had one of the most important parts in the show: he was the moneyman. Roger Lacey Stevens, 48, a balding, burly real estate operator who did not become a playgoer until he passed 30, today is the busiest producer on Broadway. He handles the purse strings for 1) the Producers' Theater, a group he formed with Producer Robert Whitehead; 2) the famed Playwrights' Company; 3) ANTA (American National Theater and Academy); and 4) the Phoenix Theater, Manhattan's most distinguished off-Broadway playhouse. This season Stevens expects to have no fewer than 16 Broadway entries.

The Goldilocks notices were lukewarm, but Moneyman Stevens was not bothered, for he is a hardened hand at flops. In eight years, out of $4,000,000 worth of plays, he has had some 20 hits, 30 misses. This fall he is already responsible for two flops: Howie and A Handful of Fire. But balancing them, his Producers' Theater has brought in Eugene O'Neill's ponderous success, A Touch of the Poet. And other Stevens projects include such items as The Pleasure of His Company, with Cornelia Otis Skinner, The Man in the Dog Suit, with Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy, and Daarlin' Man, a musical version of O'Casey's Juno and the Paycock. Some of these may soon rank with earlier Stevens' successes--Four Poster, Tea and Sympathy, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

Full Employment. "Most shows," Stevens insists, "are lousy investments unless you have a good tax base and don't mind losing money." A good tax base is exactly what Stevens has--real estate operations ranging all the way from buying the Empire State Building in 1951 (he resold it in 1954) to subleasing a vast section of downtown Seattle. But Stevens also has another, special asset: he knows how to put the touch on other people. He raises vast sums as quickly as he can raise a telephone. Says Playwright Marc (Green Pastures) Connelly: "Stevens is a stage-struck shrewdie who brings nothing to the theater but a knowledge of real estate. The only thing you can say for him is that he keeps employment at a high level."

That is saying a lot. In the two decades since Max Gordon staged Dodsworth for $59,000 and saw the show move into the black as soon as it began to gross $13,200 a week on the road, production costs have doubled. A Touch of the Poet must take in a minimum of $25,000 a week to break even; A Handful of Fire lost its backers $150,000 before the books were closed. The productions with which Stevens is connected this season will cost a total of $2,000,000 before they all get to Broadway.

Democrat, Too. The fast-stepping financing required by such production costs is second nature to Stevens, who quit the University of Michigan as a sophomore when his family was short of cash, seven years later boasted a $50,000 bank account and a $25,000-a-year income from Detroit real estate deals. After a wartime hitch in the Navy, merely making money was not enough for Stevens, and he drifted into Detroit's Drama Guild. Before long, he bought his way onto Broadway, joined the board of ANTA, then became a member of the Playwrights' Company. He impressed such topflight playwrights as Maxwell Anderson and Robert Sherwood as a wonderful source of cash. Stevens now runs syndicates of theatrical angels and archangels, one of which put together $540,000 for this year's ventures alone (his own contribution: $30,000). Stevens is also a director of a company that controls eight important theaters, guaranteeing a home for almost any Stevens show in theater-short Manhattan.

Running his real estate business in the mornings, his theater productions in the afternoons and evenings (he reads about 200 scripts a year), Stevens still finds time to raise funds for the Democratic National Committee. He is an ardent Adlai Stevenson backer and gives him a good chance to win the 1960 nomination. But if he should be offered a Washington job, Stevens is certain he will turn it down: "In Washington you have to work your tail off all the time. You don't even dare take a drink down there."

Fact is that even on Broadway, Stevens finds little time for social elbow-bending. "If I only knew more of these actors," says he wistfully. "If I had time to get to all their cocktail parties, I'd be a helluva lot better off. I find theater people a lot more fun than real estate people."

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