Broadway: Onefers & Twofers

When patches of empty seats begin to fester in the orchestra of a long-run Broadway hit, a producer will do anything that does not break the Lindbergh law to fill his seats. The commonest hookcrook is the "twofer," a pasteboard promising to sell the bearer two tickets for the price of one more or less. Press gangs range from Westchester to Harlem (where a growing middle class provides some of Broadway's steadiest customers) to drop twofer bait at insurance offices, union halls, colleges, doctors' waiting rooms and similar waterholes.

Usually the show's run is extended, sometimes for half a year or...

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