Back in the early decades of the century, when Victor Herbert was cleaning up year after year and Irving Berlin was still a singing waiter, an unspoken law existed among musical-comedy producers that nobody should ever try anything that hadn't already been worked at least one, and preferably one hundred times. Audiences were confronted year after year, for instance, with elaborate opening scenes in European palaces, full of richly garbed extras extolling the beauty, glamour, and unparalleled grace of the as yet unseen princess. Finally, when the entire company was worked into a supreme ectasy of adulation, out waltzed the star, singing gaily and enticingly flitting among her admirers, while the audience gratefully cheered, thankful for a glimpse, at last, of America's sweetheart. Producers found they could make money following the formula, which included pretty girls, costumes, music, and sets, a comedian, and a tenor, and they saw no need to try anything different.

Today things have changed, but not much. No more Victor Herbert, but Irving Berlin is very much around with a huge and highly entertaining hit called "Annie Get Your Gun." Ethel Merman is the star, but you don't see her until well into the first act, after reams of talk about her, and otherwise the show is complete with tenor, girls, comedian, and all other standard equipment, the most important of which is the feeble plot. While the non-musical stage and even the movies have moved with the times, the musical-comedy, with few exceptions, has lingered lucratively in the past.

The exceptions, however, have almost invariably excited the public to more than ordinary demands at the box-office. In the early thirties "Of Thee I Sing," a brilliant political satire, more recently "Oklahoma!" and most immediately, the Irish fantasy "Finian's Rainbow" have found new and successful ways of putting words and music together on a stage. Other producers, however, instead of following the general example of trying something new, follow the specific example of the existing new hit. Consequently "Oklahoma!" was followed by a morass of Americana with fancy ballets, and no further progress. Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote their show because they had a story to tell and that was the way to tell it. Their imitators wrote shows that way because Rodgers and Hammerstein were making lots of money.

Here is where the basic trouble lies. A musical costs so much, and has to fill such a big theater for such a long time to make money, that investors want to be sure of a hit. In a non-musical, the expense is less, and the necessary success is less, so the gamble is less. Furthermore, if the show is a flop, the less is less. A musical flop, usually costing around $250.000 is big business, and big business is interested in profits not progress.

No solution exists, except possibly in the gradually developing taste of the musical comedy public. Already tired of crudely cooked offerings audiences have demanded more subtlety in musicals. "Annie Get Your Gun," while based on old formulae, displays great advances in technique and sophistication of method. And with its appetite whetted by occasional successful novelties such as "Finian's Rainbow" and "Street Scene," perhaps the public will come to require a complete change of diet.