The Theatre: Miracle in L A.

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The U. S. cinemetropolis, Los Angeles, is one of the worst theatre towns in the country. Stars like Katharine Cornell play there to half-empty houses; a smash hit is almost as rare as one in Vatican City. But this month Los Angeles acquired one—a homemade intimate revue called Meet the People.

A sort of West Coast Pins and Needles, Meet the People was put together after dark by dog-tired volunteer screenwriters, songwriters, actors, gay young hopefuls. In order to open, it had to pass the hat, drew coins from Marc Connelly, Groucho Marx, others. Opening unheralded in a tiny Hollywood playhouse with a small cast and cheap sets, it proved an instantaneous wow.

Mildly left-wing in tone, Meet the People is unpretentious, topical, gay, with clever lyrics and catchy tunes. It kids Hollywood, dictators, John Nance Garner, tune thieves, the South :

It's the same old South;

It's a regular children's Heaven,

Where they don't start to work till

they're seven.

It's the same old South . . .

With their old-fashioned get-togethers.

Colonel, pass me the tar & feathers.

It praises Director Frank Capra, true love, the common man:

He's not the kind of guy the papers

extol,

But he's a, power in the Gallup Poll. . . .*

High point of the show comes at the end of a sentimental ditty, as the curtain is dreamily falling. Suddenly out of the wings bolts tall, dark Virginia O'Brien, rips the mawkish tune to pieces in a terrific burst of red-hot swing.