Motion Picture Herald (Mar-Apr 1942)

36 MOTION PICTU RE HERALD March 14, 1942 ASIDES and INTERL UDES By JAMES P. CUNNINGHAM Whether because of the ailing condition of the New York Tammany Tiger, deponeth sayeth not, but, regardless, the largest and most complete collection of rare documents, pamphlets, cartoons, buttons and posters pertaining to the history of the Democrats' Tammany Hall has been donated to Columbia University Library by Edwin P. Kilroe, attorney and officer of Twentieth Century-Fox, New York. The collection, numbering 71,800 pieces, is described as being particularly rich in items about Tammany Big Boss Tweed. Copies of nearly all the old Thomas Nast cartoons attacking Tweed are in the collection. One picture of Tweed was being sold at $1,000 the copy when the expose broke. It is said that only two copies were sold. Mr. Kilroe, an old Tammany man himself, had been collecting his Tammanyiana some 37 years, since 1905. He was assistant district attorney of New York from 1916 to 1921. Some of the early items of his collection traced the origins of the Society of Tammany, which was founded in Philadelphia in 1771. He believes some of the material in the collection proves that the Society of Tammany in New York was founded earlier than 1789, the accepted date. Some of the early records show that the first members of Tammany were New Yorkers who occasionally dressed as Indians or at least wore their symbol, a buck's tail, in their hats and attended celebrations in honor of the Delaware Indian after whom the society was named. This Indian was the Lenni-Lenape chieftain Tamanend, a friend of William Penn. After his death he was popularly canonized "Saint Tammany." The subject interested Mr. Kilroe so much that in 1913 he took his Ph.D. at Columbia and submitted as his thesis a scholarly work entitled "Saint Tammany and the Origin of the Society of Tammany or the Columbian Order in New York." The collection required three trucks and more than fifty wooden crates for its transportation from Mr. Kilroe's residence to the Low Memorial Library, 116th Street, between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue, where it will be housed. "If I owned the paper," columned Walter Winchell, in the New York Daily Mirror, the other morning, "there'd be no reporters sent to other cities and states to investigate graft in order to cop pushover Pulitzers. It's a cinch to crucify an out-of-town administration, where there is no kickback. The home town is where a probe takes moxie," he added. The lead news story in the very same issue of the Mirror, was a big, black headlining of how Mr. Winchell's Mirror had sent a reporter up to Bridgeport, Conn., to expose a 'mill' which allegedly turns out birth certificates to persons unidentified. New editions of modern dictionaries are due for a shaking up, reports Printers' Ink. New words to be added include 'Jeep,' 'blitz,' 'bottleneck,' 'Axis,' 'pocket battleship,' 'draftee,' 'pinball,' 'taxi dancer,' 'zombie,' 'wacky,' 'jive,' 'goon,' 'striptease' and 'pantywaist.' But they are steadfast in their absolute refusal to consider 'boogie woogie.' With absolutely no trepidation, Astor Pictures in New York sends forth the announcement that it has changed the title of its new motion picture from "Let George Do It," to "To Hell with Hitler," being a film, just arriving from King George's England. V Mark Woods, president of the new Blue Network Company, RCA's broadcasting subsidiary, has nine radio sets in his home at Short Hills, New Jersey, and some member of the household has at least one set turned on every minute from 6:45 in the morning to one o'clock the next morning. V Everything is going to be all right. The New York World-Telegratn headlines this : "CHILDREN OF 16 CAN TAKE EXAMS FOR INSANE HOSPITAL ATTENDANT." V _ // an air raid warden in the audience of the Fabian Theatre, in Cohoes, New York, sees a red light flashing on the theatre ceiling, he'll know that trouble is threatening, or is a>t hand, and that it's time to get going. The problem of reaching raid wardens attending movie theatres when air raid or blackout alarms are sounded, has thus been solved by George Seed, Cohoes' Fabian manager, zvho has installed a special flashing device in his theatre booth, to throw a red light two feet square onto his ceiling at the first sound of a prealarm warning. V Robert Marty Gillham, that big schemerfor-business Paramounteer, writes to request that, in the type limitations of headline-writing, "Reap the Wild Wind" should not be condensed to "Wild Wind'' or just plain "Wind," but rather, to "Reap," which, says 'Bob,' will have the psychological effect on exhibitors of sounding more box-officey — "reap profits," with "Wind," etc., etc. V That sudden order by the War Production Board, in Washington, freezing the sale, delivery or even rental of both new and old typewriters, isn't as bad as at first thought. A modification effected over the weekend permits the rental of a machine by anyone taking a Civil Service examination, to type his examination paper, on condition that the machine be returned to the dealer immediately thereafter. V C. Aubrey Smith has been at it now just 50 years, 50 on the stage, 27 on stage and in films. He'll be 70 come July. And he is now appearing on Broadway in, of all things — -"Spring Again." V Texas State Representative Jim Heflin has figured out how to pay his income taxes. He's going without beer, liquor and wine, tailor-made cigarettes, radios, automobile, barber-shop shaves, shoe shines, electricity, soft drinks, long distance phone calls, jewelry and candy. He may have to go without votes, too. V Universal is selling "Crack-a-Jap" cocktails at the Mirror Bar of Loew's Criterion Theatre, Times Square. It costs a dime, and consists of a glass of water and a ten-cent defense stamp. Thev got the idea from a midwestem saloon. V Arthur Lee, of film distribution note in New York, got one of those mighty few automobile rationing board cars in his native Westchester County. Uncle Sam's Leon Henderson, in Washington, sends word of enlightenment to those persons who wonder why the war has brought sugar rationing. Says Mr. Henderson : Sugar is refined from cane sugar molasses. Cane sugar molasses is a chief source of first-class ethyl alcohol. Smokeless power is made from ethyl alcohol. Every time a 16-inch gun is fired, it eats up the distilled product of a fifth of an acre of sugar cane. A thousand field pieces in an hour's firing burn up as much sugar as could be refined from a field two-thirds of a mile square. (BULLETIN from Russian War Relief, Inc., in New York : American cigarettes and pure cane sugar for a hive of Moscow bees are on their way from an Atlantic port to Russia.) V Before she rode over the crest of the "Baby Shirley" multi-million dollar wave, Shirley Temple and her parent-managers turned down many radio offers which would have brought li'l Shirley as much as $10,000 for a single broadcast. One story had it, some few years back, that one offer of $25,000 for a Christmas Day broadcast was rejected. Last year Miss Shirley went on the air, selling Elgin watches for $4,000 a broadcast. Now she's back again, selling soap for Procter and Gamble at $5,000 the broadcast. And that's not hay. V 20th-Fox Film's screen and ice-rink star Sonja Henie lost half a million dollars when Hitler marched into Norway in the spring of 1940. She had that much in the banks, in a big family home, and otherwise, all of it seized by the Hitlerites. They say Hitler's agents practically made a direct run to Sonja's bank in Oslo to pick up her cash balances. V Universal had comparative success with its "Frankenstein" features. But in three running pictures they killed him off, first by having him fall into a burning inferno, next by exploding him to bits, and, thirdly by burying him in a fiery sulphur pit. Three suth complete demolitions in a row should be enough to kill the monster to the minds of the very best theatregoing customers, Universal figured, and what to do to squeeze out just another Frankenstein picture became a problem. So they dug up "The Ghost of Frankenstein." V With Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr., asking Congress to double income taxes, the Cincinnati Enquirer's Ollie James supposes we can rely upon the sheer patriotism of Walt Disney to create a twin for Donald Duck in time to get us in twice as good a frame of mind for paying our taxes next year. V New York theatre men, meeting last week on air raid pi-eparations, chuckled over the worried expression of one local theatre manager who, at the first local defense conference, several weeks ago, asked exhibitor leaders whether he should, when moving customers from balcony to orchestra in an air raid alarm — charge them the five-cent higher orchestra seat price. V March I5th Version of that hit tune: "Deep in the Heart of Taxes."