Broadway: Angels' Racing Form

To theatergoers, Tallulah Bankhead is a magical marquee name, and Roger Stevens the highly regarded producer of West Side Story. But to Broadway's form sheet. Theatrical Investor, Actress Bankhead has finished out of the money in three consecutive starts, while Stevens is the sponsor of seven losers in his last nine attempts. This is the sort of coldly statistical handicapping that in 14 months has made TI the racing form of the angels, has encouraged Publisher Seymour Vail to go one step further with his offer to book bets on theater nags. For as little as $50 (plus brokerage fee of up to 10%), his new, SEC-approved First Theater Investing Service, Inc. will sell chunks of any of 35 upcoming shows.

Vail, a former researcher for Music Corp. of America, believes that ''investors must be safeguarded in this field just as they are in the stock market." Two years ago he began a massive analysis of Broadway past performances, divided plays into four categories depending upon the records of their participants and principals since 1956. In his top class—Group IV—Vail feels that 70% of all entries will make a profit, while he foresees a payoff for only 65% in Group III. 15% in Group II and only 6% in Group I ventures. On his form sheet for 1961: Group IV. The only show still to open this season in TI's gilt-edged category, Carnival, a musical based on the film Lili, boasts a blue-chip billing of Producer David Merrick (twelve moneymakers in his last 16 attempts), Director Gower Champion (one for one), Composer-Lyricist Bob Merrill (two for two). One of the book writers, Michael Stewart, proved himself in Bye Bye Birdie; the other, Helen Deutsch, is untested, as is Star Anna Maria Alberghetti.

Group III. Upcoming in this category (which included A Taste of Honey, Becket and Irma La Douce, among other fall openers) is Producer-Director-Writer Dore Schary's The Devil's Advocate, based on the Morris West bestseller about a contemporary case of sainthood in Italy. In the past, while wearing each of the three hats, Schary has scored 50% of the time, while his leading actor, Sam (Guys and Dolls) Levene, good as he is, has had a loser a year since 1956.

Group II. Into this unpromising assemblage—thanks in part to the presence of ill-starred Star Tallulah Bankhead and Co-Producer Roger Stevens—falls Midgie Purvis, a comedy by Mary (Harvey) Chase. Similarly tainted: Rhinoceros, which combines previously unsuccessful Producer Leo Kerz and unpredictable (three for seven) Director Joseph Anthony with an unknown commercial quantity, Playwright Eugene Ionesco.

Group I. Two of the three epics in this classification mercifully died on the road during the fall, but others have continued in the face of the TI death warrant, including The Queen and the Rebels, by another mudder among esteemed playwrights, Italian Ugo Betti, who flopped in an off-Broadway production. None of Queen's other participants has a recent Broadway past except for two-time losing Co-Producer Martin Cohen.