Osnos & Ormandy

U.S. symphony orchestras began the new season last fortnight to the sound of mingled death rattles and war cries. On the mortuary side was the Detroit Symphony. On the martial side were the Philadelphia and a half-dozen major symphonies.

One of the dozen top-tank U.S. orchestras, Detroit never really recovered from the death (in 1936) of its most famous conductor, the late Ossip Gabrilowitsch. Since then it has enjoyed a kind of incurable convalescence under a succession of guest conductors and second-rankers.

The orchestra perked up a little when Henry Ford hired its members to play on the Ford, Sunday Evening Hour broadcasts. It also gained a belated nationwide radio prestige. But last spring Tycoon Ford signed off the air. Last month the Detroit musicians' union refused to accept a cut reducing the orchestra's season from 21 to a mere 14 weeks. With the gasoline shortage (cutting down suburban patronage) and a sharp decline in advance season-ticket sales, rigor mortis set in. At this unlikely moment there appeared one of the unlikeliest patrons in the history of music --Sam the Cut-Rate Man. In private life Sam is pudgy Max Osnos, public-spirited proprietor of Sam's Cut-Rate, Inc. bargain store (everything from sulfanilamide to sweat shirts). Patron Osnos offered to hire the musicians for a series of 21 Sunday evening noncommercial broadcasts over WWJ. The incredulous Detroiters snapped up Patron Osnos' offer, delivered the remains to Sam's Cut-Rate, Inc.

Meanwhile Eugene Ormandy's vigorous Philadelphia Orchestra prepared to open its winter season, not in the plush Philadelphia Academy of Music, but in the barnlike gymnasium at Fort Dix. As a near-capacity audience of khaki-clad doughboys swayed and whistled to Johann Strauss's Emperor Waltz and Sousa's Stars 6-Stripes Forever, word arrived that the Cleveland, Minneapolis, Los Angeles and St. Louis Symphonies and the New York Philharmonic had decided to sign up for similar Army camp duties.

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