Excerpt from The Best Plays of 1951-1952: And the Year Book of the Drama in America This volume is the thirty-fifth in the series of New York theatrical records begun by the late Burns Mantle and continued by the present editor. In preparation is a record of the seasons from 1894 to 1899, being done in collaboration with Garrison P. Sherwood, which will close the gap left by the death of Prof. George C. D. Odell of Colum bia University. Odell's enormously detailed histories of the New York stage had chronicled its beginnings and were approaching the turn of the century. Mantle and Sherwood began working backward toward this same mark, first doing the Best Plays volume covering the seasons 1909-1919, and later preparing another for the series detailing the records of 1899-1909. Odell's last history brought his monumental labors forward to 1894, which left a five-year blank which presently will be filled. During this last season, 1951-1952, the American theatre was plagued by the usual ailments and these ills seemed somewhat inten sified. As is customary and habitual, complaint was made about the lack of productions, the lack of quality in productions and the lack of public support. The New York theatre fared better, of course, than the theatre in the rest of the United States. Hobe Morrison, keeper of business statistics for Variety, reported that, although there were more failures and more money was lost last season than during the season before, the public paid in more money at the box offices. High production costs and high running costs were accountable for financial disappointments, rather than any severe falling-off in public interest. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.