OCR Text |
Show The boys who try to locate yard-line markings on a football gridiron during the rainy day game will appreciate President Roosevelt's problem in trying to establish ocean combat areas. Old Kaiser Wilhelm must now realize what an amateur he was. The best way for us to keep out of the war is to go fishing. 1 WORD PICTURES: Spring came to the Square this week. And, in its own peculiar way, Spring in Times Square evidences itself it-self by sights and sounds seen nowhere else on the face of the globe. The first sign of the vernal season is always the arrival of the circus at the Garden. For' just 26 days, the Square dweller reverts to the joys of chidlhood and revels in the fascination of the big top. Then the tulips begin to nod in the window boxes at the Astor, and in the shop windows along the Square, the somewhat drab attire of Winter is replaced by the gay pastel colors of Spring and Summer garb. In the casting offices, activity reaches a feverish peak as one hopeful director direc-tor after another and even more hopeful thespians prepare for the .summer stock season. Agents jabber excitedly as act after act is pencilled into the "Borscht Circuit" of summer hotels in the Catskill Mountains. At Radio City, the scene is kaleidoscopic, kaleido-scopic, for the headliners are readying themselves for a vacation away from it all, and the summer substitutes are working themselves to death in the hope that this will be the year which Will see them vault into stardom. Bathed in the glare of the noon-day sun, the sidewalk cafes, brilliant with their gayly striped awnings, make their appearance along the side streets, and scarcely less brilliant are the odd coat and trouser combinations seen on the members of the musical fraternity who meet daily on Broadway between 48th and 49th Streets. Music Row's tunesmiths whip out song after song dealing with "spoon" and "June" and "moon," one out of a hundred of which will 'ever reach the hit class. And then suddenly, the police information infor-mation booth at 43rd Street blossoms forth in a new coal of paint kindly donated by the city fathers and Spring in all its glory is officially declared to have reached the Square. PRIVATE LIVES: Another sage of Hollywood was I uncovered recently when Julie Faye, one of the movie's brightest stars fifteen fif-teen years ago, was signed as an extra for "Northwest Mounted Police," to be directed by the man who discovered her, Cecil B. Demille . . . Gilda Grey, shimmy expert of the '20s; Eddie Leonard, of "Ida" fame ; Wini Shaw, who made "The Lady in Red" a hit; and Professor Lamberti, the crackpot xylophonist, will headline the new show at the Diamond Horseshoe which bows in May llth.coincidentally with the opening of the World's Fair: . . . The Cocoanut Grove atop the Park Central is undergoing a face lift in preparation for the arrival of Abe Lyman and his orchestra who open May 8th Happy hunting grounds for autograph fiends is the Piccadilly Lounge, where fifty or more showgals breakfast daily. ... Ditto the Woodstock Wood-stock Curtain Call Cafe, favorite dining din-ing spot of Flora Robson, a definite click in "Ladies in Retirement." James J. Johnson, the "Boy Bandit" of the fight game, held up traffic in the Square one day this week by giving a boxing lesson to his newest protegee in the middle of Broadway. . . . The greatest splash of color to hit New York in years is .scheduled to arrive ' May 12th, when the million tulips presented pre-sented to the city by the Netherlands will burst into bloom along the West Side Highway. ... They'll be dancing in the streets a night or two before the World's Fair opens when the Fair, in co-operation with the Hotels of Times Square, sponsors a monster block party in the middle of the busiest section sec-tion of the world with name bands and famous stars of the theatre participating participat-ing Television will bring the night club into the home within a month, the Taft Grill and Ben Bernie being scheduled for the first airing. . . . Harold Conrad is the newest Broadway Broad-way chronicler, Hy Gardner leaving the Eagle to publicize Billy Rose's Enterprises, En-terprises, a man-sized job at best. . . i Norma Shearer will return to Broadr way in the Fall, according to her agents who are busily engaged in hunting for a suitable script for her. |