Neither student riots nor obstreperous professors nor a gross of shrieking alarm clocks ever caused the University Theatre half so much trouble in its 25 years as a single CRIMSON editorial campaign." When the University finally decided to abolish tutoring schools in 1940 we lost about half of our regular student audience," laments Stanley Summer, manager of the UT. "Students became afraid to go the movies every day without having any cram schools to prepare them for finals."

Sumner has been with the UT ever since it was founded, back in the days when "Student Stage Smokers at Mid-Nite Saturday" were a regular part of the theatre's program. The smokers, which consisted mainly of rather ragged vaudeville acts, had to be discontinued after a while because of what were then termed "disturbances."

The crowing "disturbance" came in February, 1927, when 40 students were arrested after battling a vast assemblage of local policemen following a "Mid-Nite Smokers." One policeman told the court that some of the students had been taking their minds off the UT's performers by drinking "some of that awful modern liquor--stuff I wouldn't feed my own children."

In later years things calmed down a bit, though the Theatre and its non-Harvard patrons were constantly plagued by club and organization initiation stunts. During the late 20's the UT played one silent picture featuring an alarm clock which woke up the hero in several crucial scenes. During an afternoon showing just as the camera focused on the clock, the theatre was suddenly split by a tremendous shrieking of alarm clocks. "The next morning our ushers alone picked up 25 or so clocks which the students left behind them," Sumner recalls.

During the 30's political feeling roared high through the University, and was noticeably reflected in the UT's audience. Three thousand students signed a petition protesting as "sword-rattling" the Hearst Newsreel which the Theatre subscribed to. Faced with over-whelming disapproval, Sumner withdrew the newsreel.

He was not as easily swayed during one of the Roosevelt presidential campaigns, however. Political feelings was so bitter that hissing interrupted all newsreels, but Sumner merely ordered his ushers to inform all hissers that they were disturbing other patrons. One evening he himself noticed a man who was hissing "like a steampipe." He asked the man to stop. The man answered "You allow people to applaud don't you. Well then, I'm going to hiss."

Sumner forgot the instructions he had given to his own ushers--"Don't argue"--and told the man to get out. Just before leaving the foyer the man shouted back, "Do you know who I am --I'm Professors----(a full professor of English). "I don't care who you are, "shouted back the enraged Sumner, "get out and don't come back." The professor did, and didn't.

Nowadays students themselves comprise only from 10 to 30 percent of the UT's audience, but the atmosphere is still heavily intellectual. "We're in the peculiar spot," Sumner says, "of having about half our audience wanting us to be an "art house" with single features, but with the other half just the same as other Americans."

Attendance at the UT goes up sharply just after reading period and examinations end, falls off before and during. Business is slack now at the UT as in many other American theatres.

For the most part the Harvard community's taste is very similar to that of the rest of the nation. Last year's big hits were "Born Yesterday," "Chapter by the Dozen," and "Sunset Boulevard," all of which had from 10,000 to 15,000 paid admissions during their three-day stands. Musicals go well, but "in the last year war pictures have been poison here--just poison."

Sumner recalls one instance where sex helped out attendance considerably. "About 15 years ago we had a rather ordinary picture called "The Animal Kingdom" with Leslie Howard as the star. The first day it did just ordinary business, but after that word got out about just one joke in the film and we had hordes of students in for the next two days. The scene that got them was when Howard stepped out on a balcony, took a deep breath, and shouted inside to his house-keepers, "My heavens, James, it's very cold out. You better bring in the brass monkeys."