Broadway: The Experts' Choice

If anyone is expert about the stage, it ought to be the American National Theatre and Academy, chartered by Congress in 1935 to "extend the living Theatre beyond its present limits." Tax-exempt and supported by culture-loving subscribers, ANTA produced many worthy revivals and experimental shows, and even an original hit, Mrs. McThing, but found itself continually broke. Last fall ANTA decided to make some money by investing not in Wall Street, the race track or a brewery, but in the riskiest business of all—Broadway. The results were disastrous.

ANTA's board, which includes some of the most practiced play pickers in the trade, settled on The Conquering Hero, a musical based on a 1944 Preston Sturges movie. By consolidating the mortgage on its Broadway playhouse, ANTA was able to sink $100,000 into the show; the balance of about $250,000 was provided by other angels sponsored by Producers Roger L. Stevens and Robert Whitehead, who also happen to be ANTA's treasurer and third vice president.

Even before the production's road tryout, there were rumors that it was in trouble, but ANTA Executive Director Willard Swire defended the investment: "Up to New Haven, the show looked most promising; the chorus, usually a good gauge of how it's going, were opening charge accounts, taking leases on apartments." Whatever the chorines thought, Choreographer-turned-Director Bob Fosse was suddenly replaced by veteran Albert Marre, and last week The Conquering Hero opened on Broadway to mostly mediocre reviews. It survived for seven performances.

Explained Swire with the wistfulness of all fallen angels: "We wanted to see ANTA get out from under the debt load of the mortgage. If we had had a success like The Music Man, which The Conquering Hero closely resembles . . ." For not knowing the difference between a Music Man and a musical turkey, ANTA now faces the task of extending the "living Theatre" with a total debt of about $700,000.