THERE CAME ALSO A SAMARITAN

When the curtain rose last week at the Colonial on what was to be the final performance of "Pardon Me," and the opening chorus sang "Stranded," the words came more from the heart than do most musical comedy lyrics. All the world being divided in two parts, to wit, Broadway and other places, the cast was stranded in the rural half. And there was no golden-winged "angel" hovering near. Their fears melted when Actors' Equity met their immediate needs and in addition bought them tickets for New York.

Shows have been failures before the day of Actors' Equity, with quite different sequels. A thrifty manager would often gather up the last of the waning gate receipts and catch the midnight flyer for Manhattan, leaving ingenue and heavy to learn milking. But Actors' Equity, the protective union of the theatre, has in a great measure eliminated such incidents. Managers are protected against actors who break contracts; they are henceforward not allowed to act in any Equityontrolled theatre. On the other hand they are obliged to file a bond with Equity of sufficient size to pay each member of the cast a week's salary and his fare to Broadway. Many of the profession's finest artists are unwilling to submit themselves to the construction of Equity membership, but even they do not deny that it has cut the endings from what would have been the tragedies of the two-a-day.