Swing (Feb-Dec 1952)

THE CREAM OF CROSBY 79 Be No Night," when Alfred Lunt, look' ing every inch the Nobel-Prizc winning scientist he was playing, stated the theme which has run consistently through a lot of Mr. Sherwood's work. Simply stated, this thesis, a debatable one, is that warfare is a psychological disease which will eventually be conquered like any other disease. Even the playwright admitted later that there was a little too much of "Sherwood on the soap box," and while I didn't mind this, I think there was far too little display of Mr. Sherwood's great gifts at comedy writing. At the end, Mr. Sherwood, all six feet seven inches of him, appeared, and, in his jerky, diffident, altogether charming way, said a few words about his association with President Roosevelt. He is a man of imposing sincerity and monstrous integrity, and all of it was clearly visible on the screen. Come to think of it, all three of the people profiled by Mr. Sullivan — Miss Hayes, Mr. Hammerstein, Mr. Sherwood — have possessed a simplicity and dignity and sincerity of mien that left you with the feeling you had seen something of importance, something that would stick to your ribs a lot longer than a comedy skit in a hotel bedroom. I was a little annoyed when they brought on the half-naked dancing girls for the usual close. Seems to me that in "Yes, she's home. Who shall I . . . whom shall I say . . . Who shall , . . What's your name. Bub?" this case, they could have eliminated the dancing girls or, at very least, clothed them. Incidentally, Mr. Sullivan plans to do about one of these profiles or — as he calls them — salutes, about once a month. TV's Most Endearing Show KUKLA and Ollie could lay claim very easily to the title — oldest television stars on the air, having made their debut in department store experimental television fourteen years ago. Vast changes have been wrought in the four years they have been on network television. The Eddie Cantors and Bob Hopes and Jack Bennys have invaded the place. Ginger Rogers has been signed for $1,000,000 for five years. NBC-TV with $12?,000,000 in annual billings now preens itself as the largest single advertising outlet in the world. Milton Berle was invented. Yes, television has come a long way. The only thing television lacks — what with the big name stars and the dancing girls and all the scenery — is material. And that's the one thing "Kukla, Fran and Ollie" has; an unfailing stream of dry, human, satiric material that has delighted millions of people for years. Even at fifteen minutes it's still a grand show and certainly the most endearing one on the air. Harold Ross of ''The New Yorker" HAROLD ROSS'S contributions to modern journalism are so far-reaching and pervasive that they are as hard to explain as the air around you. We take them for granted. To understand properly the impact Ross had on all of us, you have to go back a bit and examine the journalism of the pre-New Yorker era. I should like to reprint one reporter's lead on one of the greatest of news stories, the end of the fighting in World War I. "They stopped the fighting at 11 o'clock this morning. In a twinkling of the eye four years' killing and massacre stopped, as if God had swept His omnipotent finger across the scene of world carnage and cried, 'Enough!' " Such a sentence would hardly be tolerated today; the reporters have got God out of their prose and got down to the facts. Not only has the style of journal