$4 Million, and a Couple of Misstatements, for the Shubert

I applaud the state of Connecticut’s decision to give four million bucks to New Haven’s Shubert for renovations and other stuff. State Rep. Pat Dillon requested the funds from the Bonding Commission, and was instrumental in making the case for the historic, nearly century-old Shubert.

There have been plans to expand and renovate the theater for a while now, and this makes them real. The millions are for “bond funds” and also to transition the Shubert away from its dependence on city subsidies.

Those of us who remember what it was like on College Street at night in the early ’80s, when the Shubert was dark, or—a more recent example—who recall how dead downtown was in late June prior to the creation of the Arts & Ideas festival, have no problem seeing arts as a major economic stimulator.

Have a couple of quibbles with Dillon’s press release, however. The one-paragraph description of the Shubert reads as follows:

The Shubert Theater opened on December 11, 1914. Known as the Birthplace of the Nation’s Greatest Hits, the theater launched Al Jolson, Marlon Brando, many of Richard Rogers’ shows including South Pacific, Carousel, The King and I and The Sound of Music.

The release gets the Shubert’s opening date right, but Jolson and was already a big star before he played the Shubert. By 1914, Jolson had been in several consecutive Broadway hits and was making the then-astronomical salary of $2000 a week. So “launched” ain’t quite the right verb. The Shubert has plenty to crow about without taking credit for launching actors who were doing just fine already.

(As for Brando, you might think the release is referring to the pre-Broadway try-out of A Streetcar Named Desire, at the Shubert in 1951. But the theater actually truly launched Brando’s career seven years before that, with his first Broadway role, in the huge hit I Remember Mama.)

The other quibble: composer (and I Remember Mama co-producer) Richard Rodgers’ surname has an “d” in it.