Swing (Feb-Dec 1951)

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THE CREAM OF CROSBY 337 a sitter, drive to town, find a parking place, and pay his way in. There he gets, not a fight, but a picture of one, though a pretty good one. Years ago Mike Jacobs dreamed of some day piping pictures of his fights to theaters around the country and gathering in $25,000,000 or $25,000,000,000, or some such sum. But that was in the great days of Joe Louis and also it came before television, before a man got used to the beer, the pipe and his own chair. The theory now, if I catch the drift correctly, is that our appetites have been so whetted by the spectacle of a couple of men belting each other that we will beat down the doors of a theater if deprived of the sight of blood in our homes. If I owned a theater or a prizefighter, I might conceivably be won over to this wildly optimistic assumption. Not possessing either, I have grave doubts. Both radio and television have always increased by millions the audience for sporting events, but have not always had such a happy effect on the gate receipts. But never before has anyone attempted to create a new sports fan, then deprive the drug addict of his needle and drive the maddened creature to the berserk length of parting with a buck and a half. That's why this thing is an experiment. Just possibly it might work out that way. But it might backfire entirely. It might cure him of the terrible habit entirely, restore him to sanity and socially constructive diversions like Faye Emerson. Another noble experiment, that of the National Collegiate Athletic Association in banning live telecasts of football games, has already sprung a serious leak with the decision by the University of Pennsylvania to abstain. Franny Murray, athletic director at Penn, put his finger squarely on the nature of the problem with the statement that the university "cannot agree that it is wise in either athletic policy or university policy to prevent millions from seeing inter-collegiate football on television in a vain attempt to force more thousands to pay admission at the stadium gate." That's the crux of it. If this Pandora's box hadn't been opened in the first place. there wouldn't be any problem. Now that the evils have flown out, it's going to be awfully hard to recapture them and slam the lid again. A lot of people bought television sets for no other purpose than to see sports events. They now consider sports on home television a constitutional right like free speech, and the I. B.C. and the N.C.A.A. are going to have a terr-'ble time abridging it. The New Type Cowboy THE COWBOY came out of the chuck house, bearing a plate of biscuits which he passed around to the rest of the boys. "Best biscuits I ever tasted. Howja make 'em, Joe?" inquired one of the tougher hombres, a man who looked real fast on the draw. "Bisquick," said the cowboy briskly. "I just follows Betty Crocker's instructions." So it's come to this. The cowboy has been going downhill for a long time now, ever since they took off his chaps and bandana and started dressing him in skintight pants like a ballet dancer. Now, he's taking cooking instructions from Betty Crocker when he should be out on the range shooting it out with the rustlers or maybe sitting in on a hand of five-card stud in Dead Man's Gulch Saloon. Not that the old-time cowpokes couldn't rustle up some pretty good grub but they sure didn't get their cooking lore from Betty Crocker. Next thing you know they'll be smok ing Old Golds instead of rolling their own, chasing down the canyons in Dodges in place of the old-fashioned horse and in general softening up physically and spiritually. William S. Hart must be spinning in his grave. Farewell! Farewell! IT HAS been a season of farewells, an exhausting experience for you and me. Farewell to Jimmy Durante. Goodbye, Frankie Sinatra. Au revoir. Uncle Miltie. See you in the Fall, Eddie Cantor. They're all gone now, like city folk moving to the country, leaving the air fairly empty except for the shrill unsponsored cries of the second team.