Bela Blau

Fine plays, like all fine art, are produced only with care and deliberation--expensive commodities. Able playwrights will not entrust their plays to financially insecure managers. But financially secure managers acquire fine plays, which in turn attract fine actors, directors.

Last week, a certain Bela Blau of Manhattan announced the formation of a theatrical corporation, temporarily called Bela Blau, Inc., which is substantial financially and in personnel. Next season the deliberate production of two or three plays is contemplated. If they are successful, a subscription system will be instituted. Out of a projected capitalization of $150,000, more than $100,000 has been raised. Plays are being read, actors interviewed.

Executive Director Blau, an amiable, dark-haired little man of the age the English call "thirtyish," is a native of Nagy-varod, Hungary. He has spent most of his life in the U. S. For eight years he taught Economics at the College of the City of New York. As a certified public accountant he had as a client the Theatre Guild, for which he devised a "fiscal week" sys tem. Each Saturday night the books were closed, reckoning made. Systematizing backstage procedure, he fell naturally into stage managing. Goat Song and Androcles and the Lion were two of his assignments. He has been a consultant and lecturer (Columbia University) on theatrical business problems. Now, in proof of his economic prowess, he has furnished his new offices with one month's interest from the capital collected for Bela Blau, Inc. Members of his board of directors in clude Langdon Post, New York State Assemblyman, onetime cinema critic (New York Evening World), sponsor of a bill to protect actors against the humiliation of arrest for appearance in plays adjudged immoral; Josephine Forrestal, experienced play reader; Manhattan Bankers Alonzo Potter, William V. Griffin, Duncan Spencer; Henry Codman Potter, onetime assistant stage manager with the Theatre Guild. Listed as treasurer of the venture is ubiquitous, omniferous Publisher-Explorer-Publicist George Palmer Putnam.