The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-08-09
From the Louisville Courier-Journal.


 N AN1Eb FRoHMANs proposal to cut the prices of gallery seats in 0 theatres he controls in order to meet the competition of picture shows has evoked a lively response from the press, and not a few newspapers assert that the cut should extend to the lower floor and would result in greater profits to the managers.
 At present the American amusement seeker gets a great deal more for his money than the playgoer in France or England. The prices of tickets in both Paris and London are higher than they are in New York. In addition a tax Of two francs as 8 donation to the poor is arbitrarily added to the charge for tick cts at Paris theatres under municipal law. There is also added at most theatres a fee for the girl who takes your hat and coat away from you and hides it during the performance, for no other purposes of course, than to get the graft There is an obligatory tip to the usher who finds your seat. and when it is not paid the snarl of the usher is good example of the essential brutality that is vanished by a show of politness in Paris as long as there is a prospect of cash returns. There is also an obligatory fee for the programme Formerly there was compen- sation in the fact that the programme was not fat pamphlet of advertise ments with the information about the play and players sandwiched between de- scriptions of the effects of hygienic un- h affi nil nd other desirable articles not usually dis cussed at theatre parties. But that was before the French borrowed the advanced methods of the Americans. Nowadays the Paris theatre programme is made on the American plan, but the theatres have the monumental effrontery to charge you for it. In the best London theatres equal accommodations are higher priced than in New York and the fee for the usher and the price of the programme are added. Americans are always told that the cast is always so much more capable in Lon don than in New York that prices do not matter, but 1t is not always true. When tickets can be bought at box offices in New York; and at scheduled prices, the ticket buyer has an advantage there over the ticket buyer in either London or Paris. This Is true of the theatres pre- senting Legitimate" plays and doubly true of the burlesque and vaudeville houses.
 IT 1t should necessitate any cutting of quality to meet the cutting of prices a movement in the direction of a cut in the prices of the more desirable seats in, American theatres might well be viewed with alarm by persons who appreciate good plays and acting. If parquet seats at a dollar could be made profitable the public would, of course, welcome the cut. That they would be profitable provided the cut should fill every seat at every performance is probable, but in advance of an experiment it is difficult to say whether 1t would have that effect. It is true that cheap vaudeville and 50-cent burlesque play to capacity" but there is a seemingly well-founded theory that there are more persons who want to see very low comedy than there are patrons for higher forms of art. And as there are certainly persons with long purses who would rather pay high prices for more or less exclusive seats than to join the throng that fills the parquets at the cheap theatres it would hardly pay managers to eliminate high-priced seats altogether. In some European theatres, among them those of Spain, the demand for exclusive seats is met by equip ping theatres with boxes running entirely around the house in which seats are sol'l at prices prohibitive to the more demo- cratic portion of the audience and agree ahle to fashionable theatregoers who de- sire more or less isolated reservations. But in America there is not so widespread a disposition to take advantage of second or third-class accommodations to effect a saving. If there were three classes of