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| re: I think there is some chance that Variety was wrong | |
| Posted by: BobPlak 09:43 am EST 11/22/22 | |
| In reply to: re: I think there is some chance that Variety was wrong - AlanScott 02:27 am EST 11/22/22 | |
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| I've spent a lot of time with Variety and -- well, let's put it this way: It's not as reliable as we'd like it to be. Your analysis is very good and you're almost certainly correct in your conclusion. |
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| re: I think there is some chance that Variety was wrong | |
| Posted by: AlanScott 07:44 pm EST 11/23/22 | |
| In reply to: re: I think there is some chance that Variety was wrong - BobPlak 09:43 am EST 11/22/22 | |
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| Yes, Variety has often been quite sloppy about facts, and this goes back decades. One area is performance totals, which are generally not to be trusted, and previews totals have sometimes been obviously wrong. For that matter, performance totals in most of the places we look are not to be trusted. They're not always wrong, but they are surprisingly often. If we take them as approximations, fine, but when we say something like "That show ran three more performances than this one ran," well, that sort of thing may well be wrong surprisingly often. The trouble is that getting correct totals now for so many shows of the past is essentially impossible. All we can do is make educated guesses. This is something that Suskin discusses. When you go back in time and you look at different contemporary sources, you may well find two, three or even four (maybe more sometimes) different totals, and the least trustworthy often seems to be Best Plays, which is often the source for the totals we find online. Other times the source for what we find online seems to be Theatre World, which used Variety as its source, and therefore seems to have been wrong surprisingly often. I have sometimes done what Suskin mentions doing: go week by week, checking different sources, trying to come up with answers. |
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| re: I think there is some chance that Variety was wrong | |
| Posted by: BobPlak 11:26 am EST 11/24/22 | |
| In reply to: re: I think there is some chance that Variety was wrong - AlanScott 07:44 pm EST 11/23/22 | |
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| So true. I think the best example is "Toys in the Attic". Its listing in Variety in the theater grosses the week it closed contained the typographical error that it had run 556 instead of the correct 456 performances -- which would be obvious if one multiplied the number of weeks given (58) by 8 to know it couldn't have been more than 464. Yet that wrong number was copied over into the very unreliable "Best Plays" -- which was somewhat significant, because that put it on its Long Runners list (500 or more performances), where it didn't deserve to be. The IBDB had 556, also, until someone had them correct it. I know this for a fact, because I was that person. :) |
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| re: I think there is some chance that Variety was wrong | |
| Last Edit: AlanScott 06:40 pm EST 11/24/22 | |
| Posted by: AlanScott 06:39 pm EST 11/24/22 | |
| In reply to: re: I think there is some chance that Variety was wrong - BobPlak 11:26 am EST 11/24/22 | |
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| It's good that they made the correction. Since Toys opened on a Thursday, it seems to me that it probably isn't 456, as that is a multiple of 8, and it's unlikely that it played four extra holiday performances during its run. Unlikely that it played any extra ones, although the schedule might have been altered some weeks to include a holiday matinee (with another performance canceled), but I think it's a bit unlikely that it ever gave a total of more than eight in a single week. Anyway, it seems to me that 460 is more likely the correct total. 57 full weeks plus four in the opening week. This is what I come across often: Variety and other sources giving totals that are multiples of eight, no matter what day the show opened on. Even with some shows sometimes playing more than eight performances during a holiday week, it's fairly rare that a show that didn't open on a Monday (or Tuesday once the Tuesday through Sunday schedule became more common for shows from the beginning of their runs) will have played a run that's an exact multiple of 8. At one time — through the 1920s and into the early 1930s — it was very common indeed for shows to open on a Monday, but then it became less common. It started to seem smarter not to close out of town on a Saturday and open two days later on Broadway. Almost unimaginable now that this was so common. |
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| re: I think there is some chance that Variety was wrong | |
| Posted by: BobPlak 07:10 pm EST 11/24/22 | |
| In reply to: re: I think there is some chance that Variety was wrong - AlanScott 06:39 pm EST 11/24/22 | |
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| Well, the situation for "Toys in the Attic" involves the strike of June 2-12, 1960. You're correct it only played four performances its first week, but it shut down due to the strike on Thursday, June 2, 1960, so that was a second week of only four performances. So 456 -- 464 minus 8 -- is the correct figure. The more I study Variety the bigger a mess it becomes. For years they considered the week to run from Sunday to Saturday, which is true on the calendar, but it was clear the "theatrical" week was Monday to Sunday, which they didn't wake up to until sometime in the late '60s, I think. By the way -- while I have you -- how do you get show titles in italics? I tried the [i] [/i] thing and it didn't work for me, and I don't see anything to click on for italics or bold or anything. |
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| re: I think there is some chance that Variety was wrong | |
| Posted by: keikekaze 08:58 pm EST 11/25/22 | |
| In reply to: re: I think there is some chance that Variety was wrong - BobPlak 07:10 pm EST 11/24/22 | |
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| Thanks for the specifics on the strike in 1960. I knew there was some sort of strike that had caused all the long-running shows of the 1959-60 season to seem to lose four performances, but hadn't realized that it had actually been 12 performances lost. That's why long-running shows that opened on Mondays that season, like The Sound of Music and Fiorello!, are generally listed with performance totals that you'd expect to see for a Thursday-night opening (1,444 and 796, respectively), and long-runners that opened on Thursdays, like Toys and Bye Bye Birdie, are generally credited with performance totals you'd expect to see for a Monday opening (456, 608). Apparently, everything that was still running in June lost 12 performances. |
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| re: I think there is some chance that Variety was wrong | |
| Posted by: BobPlak 11:04 am EST 11/26/22 | |
| In reply to: re: I think there is some chance that Variety was wrong - keikekaze 08:58 pm EST 11/25/22 | |
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| And then there's Gypsy at 702. At 89 weeks with a Thursday opening you'd expect (89 x 8) - 4 = 708 performances. Four are accounted for by that infamous strike, giving us 704. What happened to the other two? Well, very early in the run Merman demanded (and got) the show to close for one day so she could attend her daughter's college graduation in Colorado. The other performance was lost in January 1961 when the same thing happened so she could perform in the new president's inaugural celebrations (even though she was a Republican). I'm glad to see I'm not the only person who thinks about this kind of trivia. And for anyone who might be thinking I need to get a life -- you're absolutely right! |
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| re: I think there is some chance that Variety was wrong | |
| Posted by: AlanScott 07:48 pm EST 11/26/22 | |
| In reply to: re: I think there is some chance that Variety was wrong - BobPlak 11:04 am EST 11/26/22 | |
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| Just a reminder that shows missed 12 performances because of the strike, which started on June 2, 1960. (The Tenth Man started the strike on June 1 under circumstances that I don't feel like trying to explain, and it missed 13.) And it was resolved on Sunday, June 12, with performances restarting on the following day. Most Broadway shows played no performances from June 2 till restarting on June 13. | |
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| re: I think there is some chance that Variety was wrong | |
| Posted by: BobPlak 08:02 pm EST 11/26/22 | |
| In reply to: re: I think there is some chance that Variety was wrong - AlanScott 07:48 pm EST 11/26/22 | |
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| There's something here I must not be explaining very well. That week when everything was totally shut down -- the week of Monday, June 6, 1960 to Sunday, June 12, 1960 -- isn't counted in the total of the number of weeks a show ran. Shows would shut down for even several weeks for various reasons, usually summer layoffs (which Gypsy did shortly after the strike, reopening in mid-August at the Imperial). Those weeks certainly aren't counted in the run of the show, nor is the week it was totally shut down due to the strike -- only the half-week is counted. So not counting the strike week gave Gypsy a run of 89 weeks, not 90. So those missed 8 performances don't have to be subtracted from what the total the show would have run without a strike. That's why I only mentioned four performances missed due to the strike, which were the only four relevant to the discussion. I guess I'm still not explaining this very well. :( |
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| re: I think there is some chance that Variety was wrong | |
| Posted by: AlanScott 08:14 pm EST 11/26/22 | |
| In reply to: re: I think there is some chance that Variety was wrong - BobPlak 08:02 pm EST 11/26/22 | |
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| Oh, I get it now. I think I've just been slow in this situation. My bad, not yours. | |
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| re: I think there is some chance that Variety was wrong | |
| Posted by: keikekaze 06:14 pm EST 11/26/22 | |
| In reply to: re: I think there is some chance that Variety was wrong - BobPlak 11:04 am EST 11/26/22 | |
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| When I was in the 10 to 12 age range and first started getting interested in theater, I was already kind of a math nerd as well. So when I started looking at theater records I noticed and wondered about any discrepancies that appeared from the standard eight-times-X-number-of-weeks, plus (if the opening wasn't on a Monday) some partial opening-week number. I noticed a particular cluster of these discrepancies in the (then recent) 1959-60 season and wondered what had happened. I found out later that there had been a strike that I assumed had cost everybody that ran through the strike four performances. It wasn't until your reply above that I discovered that they'd all missed 12 performances. So thanks for the explanation, and also for the specifics about Merman's misses in Gypsy. And isn't it wonderful how Republicans and Democrats used to co-operate--or at least speak to one another--once upon a time? ; ) |
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| re: I think there is some chance that Variety was wrong | |
| Posted by: AlanScott 08:37 pm EST 11/24/22 | |
| In reply to: re: I think there is some chance that Variety was wrong - BobPlak 07:10 pm EST 11/24/22 | |
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| Hey, Bob. I completely forgot about the strike. Thanks for the reminder! But since performances were suspended starting on Thursday, June 2, 1960, and they resumed on Monday, June 13, wouldn't the correct total be 448? 12 fewer performances than the 460 it would have played if not for the strike? Maybe I'm missing something. Wouldn't be the first time. | |
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| re: I think there is some chance that Variety was wrong | |
| Posted by: BobPlak 08:42 pm EST 11/24/22 | |
| In reply to: re: I think there is some chance that Variety was wrong - AlanScott 08:37 pm EST 11/24/22 | |
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| No, the week of June 6 to 12 wasn't counted at all, since no performances were played. So there were 56 full weeks (448 performances) and two half weeks (8 more). |
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| re: I think there is some chance that Variety was wrong | |
| Posted by: AlanScott 09:04 pm EST 11/24/22 | |
| In reply to: re: I think there is some chance that Variety was wrong - BobPlak 08:42 pm EST 11/24/22 | |
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| I think that I must be coming to the limits of my ability to understand basic arithmetic. :) | |
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| re: I think there is some chance that Variety was wrong | |
| Posted by: Ann 07:22 pm EST 11/24/22 | |
| In reply to: re: I think there is some chance that Variety was wrong - BobPlak 07:10 pm EST 11/24/22 | |
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| Use the angled brackets (like less than / greater than). | |
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| re: I think there is some chance that Variety was wrong | |
| Posted by: BobPlak 08:46 pm EST 11/24/22 | |
| In reply to: re: I think there is some chance that Variety was wrong - Ann 07:22 pm EST 11/24/22 | |
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| Thanks so much! My test of it worked. | |
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