THEATRE TAX

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 80, 5 April 1933, Page 5

THEATRE TAX

PLEA FOR REDUCTION A STAGE DEPUTATION

(From "The Post's" Representative.) LONDON, March 2. Three hundred members of Parliament assembled in a committee room at the House of Commons to hear what certain well-known actors and actresses had to say about the entertainment 'tax. Mr. Fred Terry, Miss Julia Neilson, Miss Gladys Cooper, Mr. Owen Nares, Dame Madge Kendal, Mile. Vyonno Arnand, and Mme. Alice Delysia were there. Mr. W. Devercll, of the Stage Guild, who headed the deputation, appealed with facts and figures showing how the drama is being hit. Mr. Fred Terry made an emotional appeal, but the women accomplished in a few sentences of coquettishness more than the men could do with their figures arid emotion. Miss Julia Ncilson, called on to speak, uttered a loud "Oh I" of dismay—and got the biggest cheer. This is what she said: —

',' What we want is this tax taken off. You all'look very sweet. (Loud cheers.) I know you will help us. ,1 am vety, very shy, and rather nervous. Will you'do your best, gentlemen! I know you will."

Not to bo outdone, Mr., Owen Nares told the M.P.s that he had "never seen a better-looking or apparently betternourished audience." He thought that tho- drama of living flesh and blood should be taxed less than the film industry. Most theatres paid more in tax than the weekly rent of a theatre.

Dame Madge- Kendal took the meeting by storm with her bold declaration (a quotation) that "If I were among you, I would kiss." "I implore you to do something for the drama," she said. "My grandfather ,was an actormanager'years ago." And then, suddenly remembering her eighty-four yea.rs, she hid her face in her muff, and cried, "Oh, my." "I don't quite approve of women in Parliament," she went on boldly, and there was a loud cry of "shame!" , from the women M.P.s who had come to listen to her. •'But." added Dane Madge, with her irresistible sweetness, "I know they will help."