Nostalgia has come home to roost on Broadway. For the fourth* time in nine months an oldtime Viennese-type operetta started packing in the customers. This time it was Franz Lehar's The Merry Widow.
The new Merry Widow left oldtimers in the first-night audience starry-eyed with memories of the 1907 days when Widows Ethel Jackson (see cut) and Lina Abar-banell, in hats reminiscent of poultry dinners, sang it for a Broadway run of 421 performances. In the orchestra pit, conducting its willowy waltzes with a hand dipped in authentic Viennese schmalz, was the oldest Merry Widower of them all, bald, paunchy Robert Stolz,...