Onefers & Twofers

When patches of empty seats begin to fester in the orchestra of a long-run Broadway hit, a producer will do anything that does not break the Lindbergh law to fill his seats. The commonest hookcrook is the "twofer," a pasteboard promising to sell the bearer two tickets for the price of one more or less. Press gangs range from Westchester to Harlem (where a growing middle class provides some of Broadway's steadiest customers) to drop twofer bait at insurance offices, union halls, colleges, doctors' waiting rooms and similar waterholes.

Usually the show's run is extended, sometimes for half a year or more. But customers who avoid doctors and insurance men, do not attend union meetings, and are past college age, resent having to pay the regular onefer price. Did the smug type in the next seat, the onefer buyer wonders, get his wholesale?

Last week, in a fearless step toward forthrightness and publicity, the management of Fiorello! announced that instead of distributing twofers, it is moving the show to a larger theater and cutting prices on all tickets (from a $9.40 top to $7.50 on weekends). Eyes uplifted to a picture of the late Mayor La Guardia, a press-agent psalmed: "We like to think that the exuberant little man who championed his beloved city around the world would heartily approve of our making the musical comedy about him available to the widest and largest audience possible."

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