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New Yorkers last week were discovering a new place to have fun at night, the like of which had not been seen since the days (1928-29) when Author Christopher Morley was producing old melodramas on his "Seacoast of Bohemia" (Hoboken). In an old church on Manhattan's East 55th Street, last occupied by a congregation of Holy Rollers, a co-operative group of actors was presenting The Drunkard, or The Fallen Saved.

Those who bought their tickets in the remodelled vestibule read on them that for the price of admission ($1.50) they were not only entitled to the spectacle itself, but "Free Eats, Drinks and Be-merries." Inside, the place looked just like what it was supposed to be: an oldfashioned beer & music hall, with advertisements painted on the olio, tin guards over the footlights. Not only in the matter of eats, drinks and be-merries does the American Music Hall surpass the old Morley productions (which had no tables and obliged the patrons to step down the street for their beer), but its actors for the most part refrain from the broad clowning which evoked lowgrade bellows in Hoboken. On 55th Street one is supposed to be amused gently by the spectacle of a play faithfully produced in the manner of 1843, when Phineas Taylor Barnum first presented it, and people wept for the young wife (Dortha Duckworth) when her handsome husband (Hal Conklin) took to drink, rejoiced when good Banker Rencelaw brought him back to virtue and probity from a tavern shed.

Producer P. T. Barnum, an expounder of temperance, never allowed anything stronger than beer served in his auditorium. But the thrifty showman must stir in his grave, into which he was lowered 43 years ago last week, at the amount of the brew given gratis at the American Music Hall. Lavishly distributed by Producer Harry C. Bannister. Cinemactress Ann Harding's divorced husband, round after round appears, during the performance and after, when the cast descends among the guests and encourages one & all to join in singing old favorites.

Not native to New York, the oldtime music hall revivals started in the West. The Drunkard has been running almost a year in Hollywood.

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