FINANCE OF THE DRAMA

Evening Star, Issue 13014, 8 January 1907, Page 8

FINANCE OF THE DRAMA

riIEATBICAL RISKS AND PROFITS. Thu extraordinary reeoid of 13,000 per-liu'uaiiei-i lum jetsi been acliiovtd by the exceedingly tunny farcied comedy ” The Private Sl-crctary.' Brotlucwl in London m May. 1884. it has been acted coirdmimislv .since than, raid is now in its tweiuy-Fc-cont! coisECcutive year of tour. During the London rim the weekly profit amounted to £1,200. By rlre aim of tiro t.-ecc«id year’s run £BO.OOO had lit-ea made in J/oniion aiono. It rax, over 500 nights in Now' York (a remarkable ran for America), and Mr J. M. Palmer made a fortune out of it. Similar success awruted the comedy in Australia, and now there is liaxdly an Fnglißh-opeaking town in tho work! where '.lie inhabitants lave not laughed uproariously at the _v.Lya.rim of the R-c-v. Robert Spalding, who “ doie.n't like Bundon,” and of .Mr G-a-t, cat ; t-o-r. tea ; m-o-l-c, mole —Catternioie. Altngetbc:-, the amamng caieer of ’ Tho Private Secretary ’ lias reisulled hi a tutai dear profit of at least £300.000, Joeeph JcfTeiß-.in'« life-long success, 1 Rip Van Winkle,' probably made more money than any other single production. Jeffomon played the title-role no fewer than 6,000 timeft. and eamri tite great mini of £1,000,000. For three bucce>siv« seasons at tho Boston Theatre it averaged £4,000 a week in gross relume. Another Ajiuricim favorite. ‘Tho Old Homestead,' netted £350,000 in twelve years. The famous Vaudeville Theatre success, ‘ Ottr Boys,’ ran for nearly live years, at an average output of £4OO a week. Mr HanieN ‘ Little Minister’ made over £700,000 net profit iu England and America. —Rome Gold Mines.— Probably ’ A Chinctic Honeymoon ’ made more iiKiiiey rlian any other iuudeal comedy. It ran for two yeans and eight months, and at the end of that period the author estimated itis remaining value at £54.000. On the London, production alone tiie profit reached six tiguros, and there were bosides eight provmcial, American, European, :uid South xYfricau companies jilaying the piece on Lour. An turn s’ shares of each suctxisses make fortunes in thcmeelvos. Mr Pinero received £40.000 from ’Sweet Lavender.’ Mr G. R. Si me has made at, much :us £15,000 a year from one of his popular melodramas. Mr W. S Gilbert's profits from six of his Savoy opet'iUi have be-en reckoned at £9O,(XiO. ' Pygmalion and Galatea ’ alone brought that brilliant dramatist £50.000. Tho expenses of popular productions are olten more irnpivraive titan tiie profits. For example, although ’ ihc I‘rodigul Son’ deaml only £5.000, tiie. receipts amounted to £40,000. the cost of production being £7,000. and the weekly expenditure £3OO.

A Drury Lane pantomime is not often produced at a cost of less than. £20,000. The late Sir Augustus Harris. indeed, coitr sidered himself lucky if it did not run to £25.000 before the curtain was raised on the opening night.

Before t.ho curtains are rained on the 140 odd Christinas pantomimes in Groat Britain some. £400,000 has to be expended, and a further £700.000 or so must be disbursed in salaries during the run' of these, profitable annuals. —Salary Bill of £IO,OOO.

The initial cost of Mr Georg© Ed warden’s musical comedies is very great. ‘The Duchess of Dantzic ’ cost £IO,OOO to produce a.t tho Eyrie, and ten months elapsed before the origiiud outlay was returned. Mr 1-Mwaides pays out every week about £IO,OOO in salaries, fees, etc., on his numerous musical oomedios in London and the provinces.

One very popular melodrama will make more money than a score of ordinary “big successes.” ‘Tho Silver King,’ for instance, has earned more than a million pounds’ profit in its quarter-of-a-eentury career, wlrereas the total profit on a score of average West End successes rarely reaches £200,000. The principal reason tor this is the crippling rents of West End theatres us compared with the more reasonable arrangomonts obtaining in the counliy. Tho Adelphi and the Criterion are typical houses. Mr Otlio Stuart pays £II,OOO a year for the Adelphi, and the little Criterion lets at £IO.OOO, although tho most that can be squeezed out- of it is about £IBO a performance. Salaries of great artists are crippling too, especially in opera. Mapleson, in order to jewin the services of Adelina Patti, had

to pay her £I,OOO for cadi representation. Cari Rosa offered Christine Nilsson £250 a. night at Her Majesty’s, and Jean Do Rcszke refused £SOO a performance to sing in English. The late Ban Lcno commanded £250 a week. Mr George Alexander received tho tame amount for playing ‘ The Prodigal Son ’ at Drury Lane. With such demands upon his coffers, tli© modern theatrical manager has to bo very astute to make both ends meet.