The Theater: New Play in Manhattan, Dec. 19, 1949

Metropole (by William Walden; produced by Max Gordon) was a short-lived satiric farce which tried to poke fun at The New Yorker magazine and its fabulous editor, Harold W. Ross. Calling the magazine Metropole and the editor Frederick M. Hill, it depicted the wacky office life of a well-mannered publication, portrayed an explosive editor suffering from absentmindedness and ulcers.

Metropole suggested that a Ross by any other name is just no Ross at all; nor, despite Lee Tracy's expert performance, any real fun. Besides shackling The New Yorker to a leaden plot, it spoofed...

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