There's a mighty favorable rate of exchange at the Shubert this week, where "DuBarry Was a Lady" is the attraction. You put down your money and you get a Cole Porter revue, costumed, syncopated, gagged, and sexed up to the hilt. Ethel Merman and Bert Lahr perform in their best manner, with everything from the fake marble walls of a night-club men's room to the tufted satin of Louis XV's court as settings. Their special brand of humor seems even funnier when its spice is set off against the elegance of the French court.

Unfortunately, Betty Grable has to wear a few clothes; in fact, during the French court scenes, she has to wear a hoop skirt. Such superfluous drapery is the worst sort of nuisance to this particular bundle of joy, for gentlemen, those pictures you've seen don't lie. She provides the visual stimulus, while Ethel Merman tickles the erotic funnybone. Ethel could put over a song to a deaf mute and teach the facts of life to a Trappist monk by gestures alone. And also, there's Bert Lahr, who seems to have brought the Lahr leer to a new stage of perfection, for not a scene is safe from his clowning.

The songs will be hits. They may not be as brilliant as "Night and Day," but still they are the tunes you will be humming for the next six months. After some of the filthier lyrics are strained out, the air waves will be carrying "When Love Beckoned," "But in the Morning, No," "Do I Love You?", and "It Was Written in the Stars." But right now, they are only parts of a show which is one of the choicest bits of the fall theatre season.