At the turn of the last century, Berlin's local press did not have to be encouraged to take note of an upcoming star on the horizon of the city's entertainment scene. At a time in which theater performances were regularly discussed on the front pages of the local and national press, the cometlike ascendance of the Metropol Theater, Berlin's most modern stage, became almost instantaneously a privileged subject of the daily papers. As Richard Schultz pulled out all the stops for his versatile dramatic repertoire, contemporary reporters and cultural critics quickly identified the uniqueness of this enterprise, including its ambition, complexity, and ability to appeal simultaneously to mass and elite audiences. Not all were convinced of the Metropol's innovative qualities; some saw the theater as compromised by its infatuation with large-scale productions that threatened to overpower individual actors. But few voiced their critiques in terms harmful to the theater. In the prewar period, the press implicitly seemed to work to promote the theater's mission to direct the gaze of Berliners upon themselves. One may even argue that the press, consciously or otherwise, served as an extension of this grand enterprise, as it continuously fueled the curiosity of spectators and helped to create stars and fashions.

In the postwar period Metropol revues were no longer featured as prominently as they once had been in the Berlin press. The wardrobes of the theater's stars and starlets continued to be reviewed, but the theater itself seems to have lost much of its uniqueness.