Variety (Feb 1948)

WedttCBdajry Febrnary 23, 194S UTEttATI 53 Literati Bloohman Mystery Head Lawrence G. Blochman has been voted president of Mystery Writers t>l America. The election was held at the group's recent annual con- vention in New York, Other of- ficers elected were Bruno Fischer, secretary; Edward Radin, treasurer, and Hugh Pentecost, executive' veepee. • New board of directors includes ■ Pentecost, Radin, Fischer, Brett Hdlliday, Helen McCloy, Baynard 'Kendrick, EUery Queen, Anthony Boucher, Vincent Starrett, William "Brannon, Clayton Bawson, Robert Arthur, George CS)xe, Jr., Maiden Grange Bishop,'Whitman Chambers, Helen Reilly, MiltoooOzaki and Ken Crossen. Qulgley, Jr.'s, Book Interesting and scholarly book on 'fiie historical antecedents of the present motion picture camera and projector has been written by Martin Quigley, Jr., associate editor of the Motion Picture Herald and Motion Picture Daily; and son of the pub- lisher of those papers. Volume, la- beled "Magic Shadows," is to be pub- ' Ushed tomorrow (Thursday ) by Georgetown University Press. Quig- ley was graduated from Georgetown In 1939, Book, drawing extensively from original documents, "dispels the widely accepted Action that Edison and bis contemporaries in the latter ■ days of the 19th century invented motion pictures." Although the con- tributions of these scientists and inr venters was important, r Quigley points out, they didrft create motion pictures, but only effected the cul- mination of a long and dramatic trail of study, research and experimenta- tion which commenced with Aristotle and Atxhimedes and came to fruition finally as the compoiite achievement of many j>ersons in many countries. Contrary to most histories of the films, Quigley ends, rather than starts with the show at Koster & Bial's Music Hall, where Macy's now gtands on 34th street, N. Y., on April 23, 1896. While that was undoubtedly ■ the most important premiere in mo- tion picture annals and the begin- ning of films as we know them,' Quigley makes clear that there were many prior ''first nights" liaving to do with development of mathemati- cal theories and systems of optics up to the discovery by George Eastman in 1889 of a flexible base fo^r pho- tographic film, another step in mak- ing possible today's 6,000-seat Radio Ctty Music Hall version of the -peep 'Show. Herb. Buys 3 Maine Weeklies Russell Gerould, secretary to for- mer Gov. Leverett Saltonstall, of Massachusetts, and former feature editor of the Boston Herald, has bought the Eastern Gazette, 95-year old weekly in Dexter, Me. Deal includes two^ other Maine weeklies currently suspended, the Millinocket Herald-Tribune add the Lincoln Sun. Maestro's Novel Radio maestro David Broekman has" a Hollywood book, "The Shoe- string Symphony," due soon via Si- mon & Schuster, which is also bring- ing out "Westward Ha! (Or Around the World in 80 Cliches)" by S. J. Perelman and- Al Hirschfleld, which Hotidtiy jntig financecl. Fitzpatrick, as.sociate editor of Quill magazine; and treasurer, Lawrence Sullivan, business news writer, j edy package Grifflng Bancroft, chairtnan of the' Standing Committee of Correspond- ents of the Congressional Pre.ss Gal- leries, and Sol Taishoff, publishev of Bi'oadcasting mag, were elected to the board of directors, and Peter Edson, Scripps-Howard columnist, ws>s reelected. SEP, It's 45th in the series on America's most colorful citfes. Al- bany due March 13. Alan Sands has the lead ai'tielo in the March issue of "Humor Busi- ness.'' It relates what a comedy writer has to go through when he attempts to sell his owp radio com- SCULLY'S SCRAPBOOK ;^-»->i-»-»«**»* . »*»t By Frank Scully ->-»♦♦♦♦♦ ♦ ♦♦« < m »^ : J. H. MeGraw Dies at 87 James H. McGraw, 87, founder of the McGraw-Hill Publislung Co,, iriT dustrial publishing firm, died in San Tranoisco, Feb. 21. He had retired ■ In 1935j being succeeded by his son, James H. McGraw, Jr., as firm's president. Reputedly the dean of iudu.slrial •publishers, McGraw entered the publishing field in 1884 as salesman for the Railway Journal. Fifty years later lie hea'ded an organization that printed 24 national publications, and controlled the McGraw-Hill Book Go., largest firm specializing in tech- .»lcal and industrial books. A trade division, Whittlesey House, was established in 1930, and publication of fiction was started in 1944. lEoop Heads SiKina Delta, D C. .Theodore Kbop, Washington news toector for CBS, was last week ■ sleeted president of the D.C. chapter of Sigma Delta Ghi, national profes- sional journalistic fraternity. He Blicceeds Luther Huston, of the New York Times-bureau, recently upped to national president. Others elected last week included: Vice-president, Edward Jameson, Washington correspondent of the Houston Chronicle; seoretary, Dick % Falm Springs Sheets Merge Two Palm Springs (Calif.) semi- weeklies are due for merging short- ly. They're the Desert Sun and the Limelight-News. Smith Davis, newspaper broker, engineered the merger. CHATTEK Who's Who (A. N. Mai'quls Co.) doing a new WJio Knows-^and What? anthology. Rex Smith, ex-American Airlhies p.a., ex-Chi Sun m.e., flirting with the idea of a Mexico City daily (English), V . Martin Goodman readying a new film fan mag to be published quar- terly starting this summer. Gloria Votsis is editor. New summer theatre directoiT for 1948, issued by Actors Cues, is on the stands, listing over 200 spots due to operate this season. Albert Idell's "Great Blizzard" is due March 11 under tlie Henry Holt imprint. Publication date is the 60th anniversary of the big .snow of 1888. Jane Hinton has joined Aubry Publications as head of the dramatic rights department. She's authored and adapted several Broadway plays. Helen Irwin Dowdey, an editor with McFadden Publications,' was married Saturday (21) to Kenneth ■P. Littauer, associate editor of Col- liers. • "Belle," one-act play by Edwin and Nathalie Gross, is appearing in current Seventeen ma^. It's second of a series designed for school and little theatre showings. Mme. Antonia Valentin, author of the forthcoming "Mirabeau," pub- lished by Viking, last week, will make her first U.S. visit, sailing Marbh 12 on the America, "Brandy for a Hero,'' a new who- unit by forftier actor-scenarist Wil^ liam O'Farrell, contains a hoodlum character named Herman Man- kiewicz but going under the tag of Buzz "Mann. . Seven Stars Press, organized last year on- an experimental basis by Royal Hassrick and Nancy Battle Palmer, expanding its operations with four titles announced for spring publication. - Maurice Dekobra, French novelist, returned to Paris yesterday (Tues.) aboard the De Grasse after a onc- raonth stay in N. Y. to work out a dramatization of his book, "Paradise ill Montparnasse." Louis Bromficld's new non-fiction book, "Malabar Farm," will be pub- lished April 28. It's a sequel to his "Pleasant Valley" and will tell of Bromficld's work in building up his farm in Richmond County, Ohio. Ernie (Pump Room) Byfield plans a book on. American wWslcey. Says there's none been written thereon; only recently a small volume on Scotch whiskey was authored. By- field is an ex-war correspondent. New members elected to the Na- tional Institute of Arts and Letters include W. H. Auden, Padraic (I^lura, Bernard DeVoto, Matthew Joseph- son, F. O. Matthiessen, John Crowe Ransom, John Hall Wheelock and Virgil Thomson. • Carey McWilliams, whose study of anti-Semitism, "A Mask for Privi- lege," will be published March 12 by Little, Brown and will be the Book Find Club selection for April, is at work on a book about civil liberties, to be titled "Trial by Fear.'' Farrar, Straus and Hendricks House have formed a new corpora- tion, Hendricks House - Ftaprar, Straus, to operate as the college divi- sion of Farrar, Straus & Co. Hen- dricks House moves from Chicago to .share the FS headquarters in New York. Michael Blankfort has been elected chau-man of the steering committee of the .Coast committee of the Authorsf' Guild, with Boy Huggins vice-chairman and liaison with the Guild council. Howard Browne is chairman of the western Bulletin and' correspondent for the Author's League bulletin. Charles B. Driscoll, who succeeded the late O. O. Mclntyre (for whom he was the McNaught syndicated editor tor some time) as the "New York -Hay By Day" columnist, au- thored the piece on Wichita for Spotty Nitery Continued from page 43 ; there. At $1-$1.50 a picturp, with one negative often producing mul- tiple sales, the concessionaire does nicely, Poormen, ladies' and gents' room attendants, instead of getting a per- centage of the tips, now pay a weekly rental and keep the tips. This way the firm is able to realize some profit on the transaction, .since there's no' way of insuring that all gratuities are turned' in. Cigarel girls do not bring niuch profit either these days. Gravy Train Stalled As a result of not being able to get the huge wartime rentals, it's ex- pected that more bonifaces 'wUl be forced to operate their own conces- .sions. Tlie Versailles, for example, last week took over its own coat- room. There are similarly no tak- ers on the concession of the former Cafe Society Uptown, where own- ers Max Gordon and Herbert Jacoby are asking a S25,000 rental. At the same time, concessionaires are hitting more grief from the fact that several bonifaces are seeking to have the consignees eliminate- some of the gadgets to extract coin from, patronage. This is being done on the premise, that with prices what they are, perhaps the customers shouldn't be annoyed to purcha.sc dolls, gardenias, souvenir programs, etc. ; ■ The concessionaires are not only fighting those requests, but are seek- ing to introduce new merchandising ideas to compensate for the cut in revenue. The latest idea, and one that promises to produce healthy return- is the recording machine, introduced several weeks ago at the' Harem, N.Y. This is a combination broad- caster-transmitter and recorder. The patron not only hears his own voice played back, but is given a record of the conversation. In Chicago, the Pump Room has j put its own brand of chocolates for mailing. Other merchandising ideas are now being mulled. The drop in concession rentals is a -Severe blow to the average cafe owner. Frequently the money ob- tained from that source has been sufi'icient to take care of the land- lord, and often: that c6in has placed the operator on the profit side. Another result of the shorter con- cession coin is the likelihood that there will be less new cafe opera- tions. It's often happened that a new club has been opened with money advanced by the concession- aire. It's now expected that few gambles of that type will continue. BVH^Morris Continued from page 37 done several weeks ago when Mor- ri.s and Frank Sinatra reduced their arrangement over Sinatra Songs, which also was absorbed into the Morris Overall operation after only a year or so of an autonomous career. Abe Glaser and Bobby Kornheiser, who were on the B-VH stafi!, are out. Eddie Shore moves from B-V.H to Melrose, whose pro- fessional manager will continue to be Jack Lee. Shore will displace Max Kendricks, who had been with Sinatra and was moved into Melr rose. Jack Maas, Coast rep for Si- natra, incidentally, is also out. As for songs, the Morris staff takes over promotion of the "Road to Hio" score, written by B-VH for that film. Melrose, meanwhile, will be at work on the "Casbah" score. B-VH operation was an expensive one for Morris whereas the Sinatra firm had not reached such a point (there was $40,000 in profits when the deal was revised). Deal is said to have cost Morris close to $125,000 during the past year or so, due to the fact that the intervals between score by the two writers have been so long. Last tune B-VH worked Into a hit was "Old Buttermilk Sky," which, incidentally, was written by Hoagy Carmichael. He contributed "Ivy" to that firm last year, but the "Welcome Stranger" score by B^VH interrupted its .promotion. Carmi- chael's publishing deal with B->VH incidentally is involved in the setup switch but to what extent it will be effeoteK is/uncertain. Cripple Creek, Col.,. Feb. 22. Having spent half my life proving (and quite successfully too) that life cannot imprison a free soul howovcv much it cripples the old chassis, you couldn't expect me to turn hand-springs of delight at the perpetuation of the myth that all you have to do witli a beautiful dame is to immobflize her gams to turn her into a beautiful live-letter word. Variety was a good deal more charitable than I'd be in reviewing Susan Peiers' performance in Irving Cummings, Jr.'s, production of "The Sign of the Ram," a recent Columbia release. Her first picture since She lost the use of her legs in a hunting accident some years ago, it might have shown how adversity had softened and strengthened her character. What it did, instead, was to entrench the canard! that cripples become warped in their minds as well as their bodies. Perhaps this was intended to: show that Miss Peters was a ver.s.itile actress and didn't need to play for sympathy. There is, I concede, some- thing to be said for versatility. There is also something to be said in favor of being your lovely self. Unfortunately mo.st troupers, would lathtii- play anybody than themselves. With four out of hve nomitiations tor this year's Oscars portraying hellcats of sorts, 'the p.sychiatric trulls may have a case. Perhaps this is what settled the matter for all involved in the produc- tion of "The Sign of the Ram." Having a trunkload of clippings to prove that adversity had not soured Miss Peters in real life, they felt it would be a brave switch to cast her as a crippled, beautitul witch. Well, it may have been a smart ^switch, bdt .I pei-.sonally boiled for two reasons. One, because the projection room was hotter than a pressure- cooker and, two, because I. resent the perpetuation of the myth that paralysis warps the mind. Literati Chief Mcanies The literati are the chief meanies in this perpetuation of an uncharitable prejudice. Helen Colton recently pointed out to the readers' of the New York Times that the villain in "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" had a club foot. (So, for that matter, did Byron.) She further cited that the villain in Dick Tracy used a steel hook for a lost hand and had a paralyzed foot. It was her contention that writers were confusing deformity with villainy, . ■ '•''■']':::''''■' Not long ago, a smartalcc a.sked Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt in her Ladies Home Journal monthly question box, "If You Ask Me," if she didn't think that much sutfeHng and subsequent paralysis had done something td the President's mind. ' ' . She very graciously and charitably answered that it hf^Mffelt it had given him a much better understanding of those who had^mi,-.tfd or were incapacitated like himself. That was not only true of FDR biit of the vast majority of physically handicapped. During the war I paid a visit to the White Souse for a bull session with Steve Early and Marvin Mclntyre. During the session Early expressed amazement at the way I moved around on my own hdhd-looled elbow crutches. He expressed regret that the Chief was overseas'at the time. He felt sure that if FDR could .see the way I covered ground it would inspire him to imitate me. He gave me the whole inside Story of the President's handicap in the hope that I'd have the. solution; Couldn't I come back and demonstrate the sticks later? ' Well, I couldn't, but I ofl'cred to let his medical friends copy my sticks. They did, but priorities prevented his getting duplicates of mine. Hn fact, his were three times heavier, and I'm afraid proved nine times harder for a novice to manipulate. He didn't live long enough to master them and atter'his death Grace TuUy rescued them from the Truman dynasty and turcd them over to me with loving thanks. As for Early, he was so fetched by all this that he turned the President's car ahd chauffeur over to me lest I slip on the slushy streets which were loasiJig up Washington at the time. You may be sure that the experience did nothing to dry up the human juices flowing_from one physically handicapped mugg to another possibly more handicapped. Like a Gold Handicap Recently Bert Koppert rolled, into Palm Sprmgs to pick a spot for aji exhibit of art photography wiiich be had shot as he wheelchaired round the world. Like FDR a victim of .infantile paralysis, Koppert has taken the handicap as he might have taken a similar handicap in golf. . ' And doesn't anyone in Hollywood remember Ella Wickersham Who- was wheeled everywhere by her brother Bill, getting copy for their column for the Hearst string? Did any producer ever inquire to learn what was back of this lifetime devotion? Did he know that they were adagio dancers and that Bill once mi.ssed the catch, resulting in a. broken back for Ella? Such an accident, if left to the crippled minds of the literati, would have left Ella as a sort of Rebecca in a wheelchair. What Hollywood met in- stead were two people who were welded by catastrophe and mellowed by^ adversity. As a matter of fact, being confined to a wheelchair Is one of the mildest of restraints. All you have to do is go through a few VA hospitals to find lhou.sands of young veterans^who would give one leg or both to be able to chauffc«t>-ene of those chairs around' a room. I myself recall many thrills as a wheelchair ward champ in hospitals between Tucson, Ariz., and Leysin, Switzerland. Not until I met a one-legged guy who had hopped from Marseilles to Monte Carlo for a living, did I meet a physically handi> capped rival who could give me an inferiority complex. : My one solace was that he had lost e left leg and that it's easier to hop on a right gam than a left. It so happened we were about the same size, -so I gave him a lot of brand new right shoes which were no good to me. We parted the best of friends. Beware of Pity About a year ago I caught a Tyrolean production, unreleased in America, of Filippo del Giudice's, starring Lilli Palmer. It also dealt with this sub- ject. It was called "Beware of Pity." The story concerned an athletic young girl, not unlike Miss Peters, who had been crippled and confined to a wheelchair. An officer fell in love with her at a dinner table, only to take a powder on observing that she could not get up-from the table. She subsequently, as does Miss Peters in "The Sign of the Ram," rolled her chair over a cliff for a suicidal finish. In "The Sign of the Ram" this sort of cowardice is fortified with the sappiness of astrology (Illegitimate offspring of the .science of astronomy), proving that writers are sometimes more warped and handicapped in their outlook than cripples. To turn a beautiful character into a witch merely because her life has become a matter of iree'rwheeling rather than free-ivsilking is ftbout is cheap a premise As the screen Could project. It would httve been so easy to fix this one. AU the writers had to do was to give Miss Peters the sweet characteristics of her husband as played by Alexander Knox end to give him whatever meanness they had left over. Rousing the British Lion I have a suspicion that "The Sign of the Ram" will arouse more angex in Great Britain (if it ever shows there) than Loretta Young's well-meant commiserations for the paper soles of a once proud aristocracy. For here we have a British family surrounded by such luxury and decadence as not even the most supine civilization could, or would, endure. In the whole 84 lytinutes I never saw the slightest visible sign that ahyhody: in England worked for a living, day or night. Even the butler didn't seem to be really working at it. He, too, seemed' to' be under the sign of the ham; That millions do work in England and thousands who are physically handicapped, do work with them is not exactly a secret. I have seen British documentaries which sttbsiantiate this plenty. The late war has added" millions to ttie lists. Many of these no doubt do take.their disabifi- ties so much to heart that their lives are ruined. But just ai^ many tak« their handicaps as no mgl^ hobbling than a hangnail.