PUPPETS THROUGH AMERICA
.. ." and you have to have a name here. If you've got a
name we can sell you. We sell names. It doesn't matter
how good your show is—if you haven't got a name in this
country you'll lose out. We would take care of everything.
We gotta staff of forty, buying railroad tickets, arranging
for hotels, luggage, trains—everything. But you gotta have
a name iiere before we can sell you. That's what we sell
—names!)}
Names! Radio City Music Hall has a name, a very large
name for the largest auditorium and the most stupendous
lavish show, and we went on from the agent to the show
with a name. It seemed to be selling well enough—the
small figures seated in the great vacancy were innumerable
—but after all the ballyhoo and the high price of admission
we only saw a very ordinary film which could have been
seen at any cinema in England for a " bob "—and hardly
worth that. There were some dancing girls, thirty-six of
them with thirty-six legs cocking up in the air like one
centipede. But what is the interest of that? They were
so automatic and so well matched that they were not even
pornographic. And as for dancing—why! my hand puppets
come nearer to dancing than that, and if one of my audiences
showed the apathy of that crowd I would be in despair and
considering suicide for the next week.
We finished the day at the Belasco Theatre to see Dead
End, then in its second year, and that has now been produced
by the cinema. The audience here was very alive, a young,
mixed audience that was evidently intensely interested in
this study of slum life, and in these children that used
terrorism and the knife, naturally, in their games, but, on
the other hand, could show that in these dreadful conditions
dignified and fine characters could have their being. It was
warm in the theatre and the audience took off its coats. It