This meandering bit of avenue, following the tortuous curve of an ancient cow path, is delimited south of 42nd Street by the flourishing wholesale garment industry; and, north of Columbus Circle, by Central Park and automobile row, some of which extends south of the Circle, encroaching into the White Way as far as 54th Street. So, all the Glittering Gash can honestly claim for its own is 12 short blocks, measuring exactly three-fifths of a mile.
This is the street of a million lights, of a broken heart for every bulb, and more bulbs every night.
This is Gotham's Main Drag; strangely, save for the milling crowds and the blinding Mazdas, it has not now and has not had for the past decade those features which are universally supposed by all the people "in the know" all over the world, except in New York, to be on Broadway.
At this writing, on the whole "street," there are but two theatres permanently devoted to the legitimate stage.
But there are more than 30 legitimate theatres in New York. All, except the aforementioned and a handful on parallel avenues, are located east and west of Broadway, in narrow side streets in the 40's and 50's.
Of about 1,500 licensed cabarets in New York, there are at this writing but four with entrances on the Stem.
If, from seeing the film of that name, you thought 42nd Street--where it crosses Broadway--is the center of Manhattan's mad gaiety, you have much to learn.
That thoroughfare, once the home of a dozen proud theatres including the New Amsterdam of red plush and wonderful memories, is now devoted exclusively to "grind" movie houses, penny arcades, flea circuses, army and navy goods stores, orange juice stands and frowzy but friendly dames.
Broadway teems with dime dance halls, open air hot dog counters, photo and shooting galleries, souvenir and novelty holes-in-the-wall. It is the honky-tonk that was Coney Island, the crossroads carnival.
But, strangely enough, in the daytime, when the bright lights that draw the rubes are off and Broadway's sidewalks are comparatively free, it reverts to its old estate as the home and capital of the entertainment world.
For here, and nearby, are the offices of the theatrical producers, the agents who sell the acts, the dance studios where embryo chorus fillies learn to hoof; the costumers and the hooters, the scenic artists and designers--and Tin Pan Alley.