MILLIONAIRE'S THEATRE.

Northern Advocate, 16 February 1912, Page 2

MILLIONAIRE'S THEATRE.

NOBODY GOOD ENOUGH TO BE .MANAGER.

The definite abandonment is announced in New York of the scheme originated several years ago by the number of American millionaires for the establishment of a new theatre to be conducted regardless of commercial considerations and solely in the ii.terests of the national drama.

The first New Theatre, a palatial building, was erected at a cost of more than £500,000 opposite Central Park but it proved after two seasons tc be unsuitable, largely because of its great size, for the purposes of the scheme. The millionaire directors declared their intention of constructing a smaller theatie. A site was purchased and building operations were begun. A year's consideration of the criticisms of their undertaking, however, has convinced the directors that the plan is hopeless. They explain the abandonment of the project as due to the "impossibility of discovering a. manager of the New Theatre who possesses the requisite combination of scholarship, technical knowledge, and managerial capacity." The situation of the millionaires was described by one of them as "similar to that of a great banking firm building a railway through a country which everybody agreed required a railway, and then being obliged to allow the railway to lie idle for lack of a man capable of operating it."