Ticket Stubs

ORIGINAL PRODUCTION

This is an honest-to-heaven genuine ticket stub saved by an unknown (but much beloved) theater-goer as a souvenir from the Saturday matinee performance of West Side Story at the Winter Garden Theater in New York on June 21, 1958.

The price of the ticket is $4.60.

As a point of comparison, in the year 2004 the same seat in the same theater (currently housing Mamma Mia) would cost a nice round hundred bucks, not including service and handling fees.

In 1958, the 15 cent subway fare that you would have saved by walking to the theater would have been enough to buy a coffee (and a half) or a cola (and a half). At the turn of the new century, the $2.00 subway fare you save by walking to the theater would pay for anywhere from three-fourths of a cup to two cups of coffee, depending on brand/flavor preferences, in a nearby coffeehouse.

Since you cannot smoke in the lobby these days you are saving as much as six dollars for a pack of cigarettes, compared to the twenty-five cents per pack that went up in smoke during intermissions in 1958.

Playbills then, as now, were free; the more colorful souvenir programs sold for one dollar, a tenth of the 2004 cost. Memories of your night out could be preserved by purchasing the original cast album, if you could swing the $3.98 for which it retailed.

The price of a night out in New York back then, with the cost of living adjustments factored in? Comparable. The value of seeing the original production of West Side Story? Priceless.

The collection also includes:
	...this memento from the Return Engagement dated August 31, 1960. An orchestra seat for this Wednesday evening performance cost $7.80...
	...as well as this genuine collector's item: a stub from the pre-Broadway tryouts in Washington DC, a run of only three weeks. This treasure is dated August 21, the third day of previews.