Page:Once a Clown, Always a Clown.djvu/34

ONCE A CLOWN, ALWAYS A CLOWN New York and launched there, because the boast that a play had come from a run at such and such a theater on Broadway was worth money at the box offices in the hinterlands. The Broadway engagement frequently was played to a loss, but what of it? Six months' losses in New York could be retrieved usually in three months on the road. Last year, according to Billboard's annual compilation, three out of four new dramas produced on Broadway failed. More than half did not survive six weeks. And there was no road to anoint and heal their Broadway wounds.

A twelve weeks' run on Broadway once was phenomenal, but whatever the run, the production went on tour as a matter of course. Now a play may run a year on the Great White Way without finding any one willing to gamble on it as a road venture.

The play of to-day is designed for Broadway and must make its money there or not at all; certainly not one in fifteen New York productions is seen any more on the road other than in stock or repertory shows, and that one, barring such occasional prodigies as "Lightnin, will confine itself largely to cities of one hundred fifty thousand or more. Cincinnati and