"I am a great friend to public amusements, for they keep the people from vice." Thus quipped vice man Samuel Johnson in one of his more lucid moments. According to Dr. Johnson's specifications, the U. T., as a public amusement, has saved the souls of countless Harvard men who might otherwise have whiled away long, useless hours of vice in Scollay Square, the Brookline Country Club, or Widener.

Such a force in Harvard life today deserves examination, not only because of its intrinsic contemporary importance, but also because of the inherent drama of its history. For the University Theatre is the daughter of strife.

From eras antedeluvian Harvard's Administration had opposed the building of a theatre in Harvard Square as a menace to the moral welfare of undergraduates. Around the turn of the century the Administration was joined by another forward-looking, progressive institution, the Harvard Square Business Men's Association. Together, side by side, they waged war on the machine age. But finally, in 1926, they were forced into an admission that men could fly, buggies could run without horses, and a motion picture theatre could be built in Harvard Square.

Thus the U. T. "a place of pleasing, simple beauty in the Italian Renaissance period of Florentine art" became a part of Harvard of the Roaring Twenties. That was the day when Freshmen were men and every proctor carried a sub-machine gun. The U. T., as a precautionary measure, employed a bouncer who was pitcher on the Varsity baseball team and tipped the scales at 220. He was assigned to "take care" of the bathtub-gin addicts and his life was a busy one.

It was on February 11, 1927, however, that the Theatre had its baptism of fire. With touching naivete the management, in collaboration with the Administration, had arranged for a "stag-smoker with eight (8) acts of vaudeville." As the time for the show drew near, denatured alcohol was flowing like water.

The eight (8)acts of vaudeville were accompanied by the gentle crackle and splash of bursting eggs. When the final curtain rang down, the horde, fifteen hundred strong emerged onto the the street. Cambridge citizens for miles around promptly turned in a riot alarm, bolted their doors and hid under their beds.

Within the twinkling of an eye, the Cambridge police appeared on the scene armed with nightsticks, machetes, battle-axes, and a couple of French seventy-fives. With their customary fortitude and wisdom, they managed to quell the "disturbance" with only a few casualties. But since then, the U. T. has held no more "stagsmoker with eight (8) acts of vaudeville."

The post-depression history of the U. T. has been comparatively uneventful. Aside from some occasional woo-pitching in the balcony, and the universal gnashing of teeth at any appearance of Dick Powell or Robert Taylor, the management has had little to fret about. Vaudeville has gone and egg-throwing has become a national issue. Even the materialization of Ann Sheridan on the stage of the U. T. has become an unfulfilled memory.

Bathtub gin, riots, and actresses may come and go, but the University Theatre carries on its crusade against the vices of college and day by day converts to the sweeter, the pleasanter, the movie-going Way of Life.