The Theatre: Show Business: Nov. 25, 1940

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>To millions of Americans every gaudy, traditional aspect of the circus is little less than sacred. Last week those sanctities were seriously threatened. Modernist Designer Norman Bel Geddes, who conceived General Motors' famed Futurama at the recent New York World's Fair, arrived at the Sarasota, Fla. winter quarters of Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey's circus to begin a two-year modernization of "The Greatest Show On Earth." Mr. Geddes quickly assured the press that nothing newfangled would be done with clowns, elephants, acrobats. He gave a few hints as to his intentions. Next year, he said, the menagerie would not be displayed in their usual cage wagons, but in scenes resembling the animals' native habitats. Eventually the big top, with its many tent poles, would be replaced by a poleless canvas hung from 160-foot portable steel towers.

>Tough, smiling President George Browne of the big American Federation of Labor stagehands' union, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employes, has long wanted to be tsar of entertainment labor. Last year he tried hard, got a setback in a ruckus with the actors' unions (TIME, Sept. 11, 1939). Some 48 A. F. of L. unions are concerned in one way or another with show business, including those of the teamsters, upholsterers, costume workers, floor coverers, ornamental iron workers, bartenders. Last week 20 of them joined in a superunion: the Combined Theatrical Amusement Crafts. Its announced purpose: to corral the rest of the 48. Its president is Vincent Jacobi of the stagehands' Theatrical Protective Union No. 1. But observers wondered whether behind the scenes ambitious George Browne might be trying for tsardom again.

>In the oak-paneled lobby of Manhattan's Algonquin Hotel, popular theatrical rendezvous, Manager Frank Case last week hung the photographs of eleven Broadway dramacritics. Since the hotel is also frequented by actors, Mr. Case announced that he had posted a 24-hour guard over the pictures, had framed them under shatterproof glass.