Broadway: Return of the Icemen

This was going to be the season of the big thaw—the melting of the $10 million glacier of box-office ice, which is Broadway’s term for ticket scalpers’ profits. But last week Manhattan’s District Attorney arrested nine ticket salesmen on charges of scalping. Tickets to How to Succeed were selling for $20 apiece, and ” the scalpers were even dealing in ducats for the lowly New York Mets.

To show why ice continues to form, the D.A. released a list of the scalpers’ customers, among them some of Manhattan’s most upstanding corporations: First National City Bank, United States Steel Corp., American Telephone & Telegraph Co., Kenyon & Eckhardt Advertising Agency, the Chemical Bank New York Trust Co., Leeds Music Corp., and Hanes Hosiery, Inc.