"We'll buy the babies A box at 'Abie's Irish Rose'; I hope we live to see It clo-o-se. ..." —OLD SONG
Like popular songs, good business women appear often in the U. S. There are so many of these women, smart and well-to-do, making money as brokers, bankers, milliners, writers, politicians, decorators, that, like the dapper melodies that reflect the trends of the times, they have become a national tradition. But there are not many women whose earned income exceeds $10,000 a year. Here and there one finds a woman capitalist like Mrs. Edward Harriman, who last week received the honorary degree of Master of Letters from New York University. Mrs. Harriman is a discerning patron of the arts and sciences, an elderly, slender and competent person who helped her famed husband in his ventures and is now the sole executrix of $140,000,000, the largest fortune controlled by any woman in the world. But since this fortune derived originally from her husband, his widow cannot take rank among those women who made their money by their own unaided efforts. Most commentators therefore give the title "most successful business woman in the U. S." to a very different sort of lady who last week also appeared in the news.
Miss Anne Nichols is always in the news. If nowhere else, her name is on the theatre page where a brief notice states that her play, Abie's Irish Rose, is to be seen on Broadway. It is also to be seen in Philadelphia, in Chicago, in Fort Smith, Ark., in Pueblo, Col., in Augusta, Me., and in Sydney, Australia. Next April an eighth company opens in London. Last week the Manhattan company, with its 2,000th performance, equaled the world's record for consecutive performances.* Abie's Irish Rose has run for four years and eight months on Broadway, has been seen there by 1,750,000 people, has earned there gross receipts of $3,000,000. The total gross. receipts from the play, including the road companies, playing to 7,000-000 more people, are about $20,000,000, of which Miss Nichols' personal profit has been $5,000000.† And last week, after four years of bickering, a deal for the moving picture rights was completed. The terms were not made public. The Famous Players-Lasky Corp. supposedly gave Miss Nichols a huge cash payment and a percentage of receipts.