Last Reel

Why, Mother, do you sit up so late? You cry so much, and look so white--Mother, do not cry. Is it because Father does not come home to bring us bread? We shall find Father bye and bye.

From temperance club to neighborhood pub, these heart-searing words have echoed in countless performances since they were put down more than a century ago by an actor named William Sedley and picked up by P. T. Barnum, first big producer of The Drunkard, or The Fallen Saved. Last week The Drunkard's lachrymose prose reverberated no more in Los Angeles, where the show was revived in 1933 at the small, stucco Theatre Mart and reeled on for the longest run in U.S. theatrical history: 9,477 performances. The play was a victim of exhaustion and the local fire department (which recently cut the Theatre Mart's top capacity from 340 seats to an uneconomic 280).

During its 26-year run, 3,080,025 tourists and Angelenos paid (1959 top: $4.50) to see the show, jeer its four sneering villains, cheer its seven winning heroes. The customers also downed 5,700,000 bottles of free beer, ate 3,000,000 sandwiches. A sort of Everylush that chronicles the progress of evil as it pickles its weak title character, The Drunkard turned the Theatre Mart into a favorite resort for W. C. Fields, Mae West, Lily Pons. Though the playhouse has been put on the block, there is a chance that The Drunkard may survive for one last fling. Its producer hopes to have the company tour the U.S. and culture-thirsty foreign lands.

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