The Telephone Booth Indian (16 page)

Modern concessionaires, more efficient, use a variation of the Bedaux System. They keep charts from which they establish a norm of production for each girl and location. The concessionaire knows, when he goes into a new restaurant, approximately what to expect. If there is a minimum charge of $1.50, for example, the tipping should compare with that at the old Paradise. He will then expect, from each hundred tippers, a return of about thirteen dollars. The first crew of girls he puts in his new concession are reasonably safe if they approach that standard. The girls do not know exactly what their boss expects, so the assumption is they will try hard to make a good showing. After a few weeks, the concessionaire switches the girls to another place and brings in a new set. If the receipts fall off noticeably, he suspects the replacements. If receipts rise, he suspects the first group. He shifts individual girls in the same way. If a hypothetical Billie, checking hats at a certain club for a month, turns in an average of eleven cents a customer, while an equally hypothetical Mamie over a similar period averages sixteen cents, he bounces Billie. By continued shifts, he establishes an average for the place. This may not turn out the same as the average at the Paradise, however. The new club may get a high ratio of Southern patronage, which brings the average tip down, or of “collegiates,” notoriously
poor tippers, or of racetrack men, notoriously good ones.

After each tour of the house, a cigarette girl turns in all the cash she has received. In this way she has no chance to hoard her tips for the evening. She might decide, if they were unusually good, that she could safely knock down a dollar for herself. Even at that, most cigarette girls manage to keep some part of their tips. Concessionaires never know exactly how much, but if the girl is a “producer,” they don't care.

“Better a kid who takes ten in tips and knocks a buck,” a pillar of the industry once said, “than a dummy who gets half the tips and turns in all she gets. But please don't use my name, because on such a question I hate to quote myself.”

ommonly, when a family achieves such fame that it has a street named in its honor, it moves to a better part of town. There are no Roosevelts on Roosevelt Street, no Astors within blocks of Astor Place, and no Vanderbilts on Vanderbilt Avenue except when Brigadier General Cornelius Vanderbilt pays an occasional visit to the Yale Club. Lee and J.J. Shubert, however, live almost entirely in, above, and around Shubert Alley, which runs from Fortyfourth to Fortyfifth Streets between Broadway and Eighth Avenue. The Alley, although it has a sidewalk and a roadway for automobiles, is a private street, part of the property rented to the Shuberts by the Astor Estate in 1912 on a lease which still has sixtynine years to run. The rest of the leased area is covered by the Shubert, Booth, Plymouth, and Broadhurst theaters. Lee Shubert's private office is in the turret at the southeast corner of the Shubert Theatre building. His desk is directly above the “u” in the theater's sign. J.J., who long ago conceived a seignoral disdain for his given name of Jacob, lives just across Fortyfourth Street, on the tenth floor of the Sardi Building, which the Shuberts own; the sixth floor is given over to his offices. J.J. often says that he likes to live upstairs from his business. Lee has an apartment adjoining his offices on the fifth floor of the Shubert, but he seldom uses this suite except for shaves and sunray treatments, both
endured in a barber chair which he has had installed there. He prefers to sleep in the Century Apartments, on the site of the old Century Theatre on Central Park West. Even there he is not outside the Shubert sphere, for the brothers hold a second mortgage on the apartment building.

The Messrs. Shubert have been the largest operators in the New York theater for so long that only a few persons remember that they were once boy wonders in Syracuse, where both of them were running theaters before they had reached their twenties. City records in Syracuse show that Lee was born there sixtysix years ago and J.J. five years later, but the brothers still have the brisk and querulous quality of two combative small boys who feel the teacher is down on them. A few years ago they addressed a manifesto to New York dramatic editors, insisting that they be referred to by the collective designation of “the Messrs. Shubert.” “Lee and Jake,” they felt, sounded much too flippant. Lee takes a quiet pride in being known as the fastest walker on Broadway. He walks fast even when he doesn't know where he is going. J.J. is distinguished for his bitter vehemence at rehearsals. “There is only one captain on this ship,” he once shouted while rehearsing a musical, “the director and me!”

When Lee, in his office in the Shubert Theatre, wishes to communicate with J.J., in the Sardi Building, he summons Jack Morris, his secretary, and says, “Take a letter to Mr. J.J.” When J.J. wishes to communicate with Lee, he says to his secretary, “Take a letter to Mr. Lee.” This custom has given rise to a theaterdistrict legend that the brothers are mortal enemies and do not speak at all. The legend is not founded on fact. When either of the Shuberts is really in a hurry to discuss something with the other, he walks across the street to do so. An even more fanciful theory has it that the story of animosity between the two has been fostered for business reasons by the Shuberts themselves. The
exponents of this theory contend that when Lee wants to get out of a deal, he says that J.J. will not allow him to go through with it, and that when J.J. wants to get out of a deal, he blames Lee. Actually there is no overt hostility between the brothers. Mr. J.J. says that it was the intention of the Messrs., when they collaborated in the construction of the Sardi Building in 1926, to move all their executive offices there from the somewhat constricted quarters on the upper floors of the Shubert Theatre. That summer, Mr. J.J., who sometimes explains a predilection for foreign musical shows by saying, “I am more dynamic and Continental than Mr. Lee,” made his annual trip to Europe to inspect the new vintage of operettas. When he returned, he found that his office furniture had been moved into the new building, but that Mr. Lee had treacherously remained in the Shubert Theatre. The Shubert enterprises have been a twoheaded organism ever since, with Mr. Lee's casting department and executive staff on the north side of Fortyfourth Street and Mr. J.J.'s on the south side. The publicity and auditing departments are on Mr. J.J.'s side of the street; the realestate, theaterbooking, and financial departments are on Mr. Lee's. The balance of power is worked out to the last milligram: Mrs. Lillian Duffy, the plump, whitehaired receptionist in Mr. Lee's office, has the authority to hire all girl ushers for Shubert theaters; Mrs. Loretta Gorman, Mrs. Duffy's practically identical sister, is Mr. J.J.'s receptionist and hires all the theater charwomen. But the brothers, like most twoheaded creatures, have a single life line. All their real estate is held in common, and they have a joint checking account. The separateoffice arrangement resembles one of those dual households advocated by married female novelists. The Shuberts retain community of interests, but avoid friction; each produces shows without interference from the other. Failure of one of Mr. J.J.'s shows is made easier for Mr. Lee to bear by the knowledge that it was Mr. J.J.'s idea.
Success is sweetened for Mr. Lee by the reflection that he will share in the profits. Things work out the same way on the other side of the street.

The brothers' chauffeurs amicably share the parking facilities of the Alley, which are also made available to producers and stars of companies playing the Shubert Theatre if the shows are hits. Katharine Hepburn, for instance, parked her car there regularly during the many months
The Philadelphia Story
filled the theater. Mr. Lee has three automobiles, all of them foreign—a RollsRoyce, a HispanoSuiza, and an IsottaFraschini. Mr. J.J. favors American cars. Mr. Lee explains that he has never owned any but European automobiles because when he is in this country he is too busy to go shopping. He finds his only moments of relaxation during cruises and trips abroad, when he sometimes has half an hour to spare. It was during one such trip that he signed up Carmen Miranda in Rio de Janeiro and brought her to New York to star in
The Streets of Paris.

Mr. Lee comes to work every day shortly before noon. He leaves his desk to go home to the Century Apartments at three or four o'clock in the morning. When people ask him why he works such long hours, he says, “I am not a loafing kind of boy.” The habit goes back to the days of the great commercial rivalry which existed for fifteen years between the Shuberts and the firm of Klaw & Erlanger. Abe Erlanger was an early riser. Once he told a friend, “I am up and at my desk while the Shuberts still are sleeping.” Mr. Lee decided that the only way to beat Erlanger was to stay up all night. Erlanger and Marc Klaw, his partner, are now dead, but Mr. Lee still can't sleep nights. J.J. attributes his brother's outrageous workday to the fact that Lee has always been a bachelor. Although J.J. himself has not had a wife since he was divorced in 1918, he says that the experience of marriage, no matter how far in the past, so changes a man's metabolism
that he never again wants to work more than twelve hours at a stretch. Shubert employees—house and company managers, play readers, and publicity men—have the sympathy of their professional colleagues, because they must remain virtually on call until Mr. Lee decides to go home. The Shubert playreading department gets about fifty manuscripts a month throughout the year and filters the best ones through to Mr. Lee's office. Authors of these promising works are sometimes summoned at a grisly hour shortly before dawn to read their scripts aloud. Mr. Lee never reads a play himself; he merely looks at synopses drawn up by his readers. During an author's reading, Mr. Lee sometimes appears to fall asleep. This is a frightful experience for the playwright, who is afraid to offend the producer by awakening him and, in desperation, continues reading. Mr. Lee always maintains that he has heard every word. The concentration of the Shuberts on their business is looked upon by most theatrical people as unsporting. If the brothers were going to work so hard, these critics think, they should have taken up a trade instead of the theater. Mr. Lee's incessant activity, even though some of it is undoubtedly superfluous, has served him well during his fortytwo years on Broadway. He has simply outworn most of his opponents.

Mr. Lee is a short man whose appearance is so ostentatiously youthful that he is usually suspected of being very old. His face is a deep copper red all year round, a result of the sunray treatments and sun baths which he takes whenever he gets a chance. A musicalcomedy director, strolling near the Mazzini statue in Central Park one morning, saw Mr. Lee asleep in the open tonneau of one of his automobiles with his face turned toward the sun. Mr. Lee's chauffeur, also asleep, lolled in the front seat. Before the invention of the sunray lamp, it was customary for writers
to mention Lee's “midnight pallor.” Because of his high cheekbones, narrow eyes, and lank black hair, it was also customary to say that he looked Oriental. Now that he can take sunray treatments, his upturned eyebrows and the deep wrinkles at the corners of his eyes make him look something like a goodnatured Indian—Willie Howard, perhaps, in warchief makeup. Mr. Lee always wears conservative, wellfitted suits made for him by Gray & Lampel, on East Fiftythird Street, at $225 each, and he has a liking for thicksoled, handmade English shoes and pleated shirts, which he wears with stiff collars. He admires his extremely small feet. There is a sedulous avoidance of flashiness in his dressing, but nothing pleases him better than a compliment on his clothes. Joe Peters, Mr. Lee's valet, shaves him at eleven in the morning and at seven in the evening. When Mr. Lee needs a new valet, he goes to the Hotel Astor barbershop and hires a barber. It was there he got Peters and Peters' predecessor. He has had only three valets in thirtytwo years. Mr. Lee takes good care of his figure. He often lunches on half a cantaloupe and an order of sliced tomatoes.

In contrast to his older brother, Mr. J.J. seems dumpy and rumpled. While Lee's hair is preternaturally black and lank, J.J.'s is gray and wavy. Although he is a small man, there is something taurine about the set of his neck and head, and there is a permanent suggestion of a pout on his lips. Mr. Lee's voice has an indefinable foreign intonation; he is always polite, tentatively friendly, and on guard. Mr. J.J., who has no trace of accent, can be an unabashed huckster, choleric and loud, but he can be warmer and more ingratiating than his brother when he wants to.

It is pretty nearly impossible to make a living in the American theater without encountering the Shuberts because they own, lease, or manage twenty of the fortyodd legitimate theaters
in New York and control about fifteen theaters in other cities, a very high percentage of the total theaters, considering the low estate to which the road has declined. As theatrical landlords, the Shuberts have practically no real competitor in New York City, although Sam Grisman occasionally gets his hands on two or three theaters at a time. Theaters not owned or controlled by the brothers are for the most part in the hands of independent producers. Since the producer of a play usually turns over at least thirtyfive per cent of the gross receipts as theater rent, the Shuberts, even if at any given time they had no show of their own running, could still conceivably be sharing in the profits of twenty attractions. This would give them by far the largest single take in the success of any theatrical season. In point of fact, however, they do produce shows. Like the moviemakers, they have to schedule their product with an eye to the number of theaters they must keep busy. If they have six theaters empty and only one manuscript of promise, they must go ahead and produce six shows anyway.