What Makes for Success?

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 252, 14 January 1928, Page 20

What Makes for Success?

American Producers State Their Views W hat makes for success in a musical Bta /his P autstTon n has .been discussed recently bv well-known producers in New York; whose arguments were as fot--loFlorenz0 Florenz Ziegfeld, of the Follies, argues that 90 per cent, of the success of a musical show depends on the beau-y of the girls. George White contends that music and dancing are the essential elements of success. J. J. Shubett emphasises comedy as the important factor George M. Cohan demands thv, band and all that goes with it. Gene Buck pins his faith on speed and Arthur Hammerstein takes issue with his rivals. He backs the book against all other factors. He puts his chips on the plot. Although almost every other producer looks on a plot in a musical play as at worst a more or less necessary evil to be ignored when possible, at best, a thread to hang the music and mirth on. But Hammerstein insisted, pausing in a, rehearsal of “Golden Dawn”: “A dance is done in a season, at most. Look at the Charleston. A song is forgotten in a few months, as was ‘Three o'clock in the Morning.’ But the plot of a play, the book of a show, sustains the whole structure and may endure for ever. Where would the Puccini operas be to-day without the splendid stories into which the music is woven?