Variety (Mar 1948)

Litet^ati Time Mwrcbes On To 25lli~Xnnt Quarier-ceftturyoW Time mag, aUU scrappy, unsedate, marks its l5th milestone with an 11-pkge self- evaluation in current (March 8) Issue. Meticulous, thorough, objec- tive staffers peer down mag's gullet to tell readers how it ticks; cover birth, operation, credo of thci mag; lists its achievements, flop^, where It succeeded, where it lailed.. Time editors laud Time's news- gathering organization, its research and checking system, stress fact it first to tell news as a narrative jtory. Admitting impartiality is im- possible in news reportage, editors claim they strive towards fairness. Times change and Time with them; out has gone the short, clipped, in- verted writing style of adjectives before names. "Gone are the days when Time's pages were exclusively inhabited by a jut-jawed, buckr toothed, moose-tall, haystack-haired .jiace," • Written "for the busy man," at editorial cost of $1.48 a word, mag iiolds Managing Editor T. S. Mathuws responsible for every word in the sheet. Senior editor Whittaker Chambers is special "literary doctor." At apex of organization stands tall, gaunt; glum Henry B. Luce, "who ^nds responsible, along with liathews^ for whatever Time says," t'- ■ ■ ■■'■'v'■■■ •■■'^'^''^ '■■ ■■■'/■■ But Sfttevepost for $MO,«M . Saturday Evening Post has been dapped with'a $400,000 damage suit in Washington for a recent article ' OttD;C. cabs called "Never Give the Passenger an Even Break." Suit for "libel- was brought by Thomas W. i'owler, owner of Columbia Cab Co., and Charles B. Howery, a driver, who is suing in behalf of 59 other Columbia drivers. Named as co- defendant is James J. Brennan. Piece is illustrated by a pictOre of * Columbia Cab. Complaint in the suit is. that the Columbia Co. has : i}66h. damagi^ by the photograph. ■ f'bwler asks $100,000 and Howery wants $800,000. Lionel Shapiro's Encore Uonel Shapiro, Canadian war cor- Vespondent whose best'sclling novel, "S^led Verdict," has just been filmed by Paramount, is working on another which has picture companies bidding. Untitled as yet and still in rough draft form, the 25,000-word novelette concerns postwar Italy. Par has first crack at the new one as'result of the ''Sd^ied Verdict" pur- chase. Eleanor Kennedy of. Music Corp. of America is agenting. three times on the grounds thaj^^ helped "organize" the SCHW. ' ? It seems strange to Martin, "par- ticularly in view of the fact that he has been an outspotcen foe of Com^ munism. Mystery Writers' Policies National officers, national board members and policy committee members of the Mystery .Writers of America, "having a special respon- sibility, are therefore obligated to discu-ss" their book contracts with the national board before signing them. That was resolved at the organization's first annual Conven- tion, held recently in New "Vork. It was also resolved to pursue a policy of cooperation with the Au- thors League of America and its va- rious guilds <with whom no xela'- tions exist), to. continue efforts to get royalties for authors and pub<- llshers from lending libraries, to fight for the MWA basic book con- tract "in its entirety." to support the aims of and cooperate with the true- crime writers in the pulp section of the Authors ■ Guild and assist them in contract negotiations. The treasurer's annual report showed 12 months' total receipts of $4,268.27 and expenditures of $5,- 570.06, with a cash balance of $277.19 as of last Feb. 1, compared with a balance of $1,578.98 the previous year. However, it was noted that there were more than $1,000 in royalties due and shortly payable for reprints of the MWA's two an- thologies. It was reported that the new of- ficers of the .midwest chapter are Alviui E. Rose (Allan Pruitt), le- gional vecpee; Milton K. Ozaki, treasurer, and Miriam S. Allen, sec- retary; and ' of the San Francisco chapter are Gary Lucas, prez; Flor- ence Faulkner, treasurer, and Vir- ginia Rath, secretary. The next meeting of the Frisco chapter will be March 17 and of the midwest chapter March 22. fourth annu^a detective short story contest with, prizes totalling $6,000. Deadline for entries is Oct. 20. Cass Canficid . iHarper's) and James T. FarrcU r'Studs Loirigan" and "The Fate of Writing in Amer- ica" ) will discuss "Freedom of Press in Book Publishing" Friday niyht (12) at the New School for Social Research, N. Y. H. Allen Smith and his wife mo- toring March 15 to sojourn with Jim Street in Chapel Hill, N. C; to spiel at book author luncheon in Charles- ton, W. Va., March 20. Smith ju.st sold a piece on vaudeville's Doc Rockwell to True mag. Ashton Stevens' fine .salute to two Loop expatriates, Hecht & MacAr- thur, in the Chi Herald American, on pcea.sion of Gilbert Gabriel be- coming drama critic for Theatre Arts monthly, which Mac Arthur will edit. Post had originally been ofl'ercd Stevens. . Justin Gray's "I Joined the Ameri- can Legion," on which Reynal & Hitchcock paid advance royalties and then rejected fos publication, has been rewritten by Victor Ber- stein. PM feature writer,, and is slated for late spring release by Boni & Gacr. Members of the American Book Publishers Council are now offered group insuritnce against libel, plag- iarism, invasion of privacy and copyright infringement suits, up to $50,000 a year. Similar policies have been available to radio sponsors and advertising agencies for years. Philip Stack, 47. who contributed verse to Walter Winchell's column under the pseudonym Don Wahn. and occasionally (in pretended re- ply) Donna Wanda, jumped to his death Feb. 4 from his studio in New York. He left a note explaining that he was. incurably ill, and leaving everything to His wife. Englisti rights to "Murder by Ex- perts," the 1947 anthoVogy of Mys- tery Writers of America, have been sold to the London publishing firm of Sampson Low. The deal calls for i SCUXLY*S SCRAPBOOK i By Frank Scully ♦♦♦♦ ♦ ♦♦♦♦ MM »» t Income, Texij, March 8. To those constant readers likely to be caught a little short by March 15, I throw this rope of hope. How would you like to turn an honest buck into: $15,000? If an actor did it, could you do loss? You don't have to be on the inside of commodity futures or foreign ex- change. All you have to do is to get an editor to believe this story so . much that he not only buys the story but the rug, . - The rug is a hand woven reproduction of One Dollar Bill Number H8568.5068A; In fact, if you have that particular buck in your pocket you can make $250 on the deal right now. Eugene Linder brought the woven buck to Bedside Manor the other, day. It is 6 ft 2 inches long and 3 ft. 2.inches wide. It took a year for tour expert rugmakers to reproduce it, and Grant and Lincoln come out', better than I've seen them in years. . Will It Boy . a Sc Cigar? The tapestry is 172 times larger than the dollar bills now circuljating, which are,: as you know, -so small and of such little buying power that nobody could get much publicity these days even lighting cigars with, thenu I had' an idea that the Government stopped all this sort, of things years ago. In fact I remember, and others must too, that Dolan's, the first o£ the all-night hcaneries on Park Row, used to display a work of art called "A Barrel of Money." And despite the fact that the proprietor often spent the night at the White House with Teddy Roosevelt there was talk thai the thing would have to come down off the wall because it was too great an inspiration to counterfeiters. Gene Linder's handwoven giant-size one-dollar bill has been through much the isame wringer. But from documents he supplied me it appears now that the Secret Service and the U. S. attorney's office have decided it could hardly be passed for fiat money. It is Gene Linder's idea that the story of this unique eft'ort to combine art and money should. have some editor sitting on the ed!ge of his chair. In fact he'told me that one of the biggest weeklies assured him it was a positive "must" for a rivaL I laughed, too, at this Utopian touch, but maybe editors have changed a lot since we were reporters and nqw spend their lives hunting out ex^ clusives for their rivals, - . It Happened In Paris Thiis woven buck has a peculiar patriotic origin. It was dreamed up by Max Linder in Paris. He was known in my time as the Charlie Chaplin of France. Besides being an actor. Max Linder was successful as a motion picture producer. He had a great deal ^6f admiration for the United States of America. He also liked the rug-maJdng skill of such oldtimers in the field as Persia, China, India and France. He first thought he could hire the best of these to reproduce a tapestry of the U. S. Constitution. But that seemed too big a job. Next he tried Hopkins''Reference' Samuel French is publishing "Ref- erence Point," by Arthur Hopkins, tome being due late this month. Book is based on the. showman's talks on the theatre to clas.^es at Fordham' Univ., N. Y., during, last summer's semester, when Hopkins was special instructor and director, of college plays. Iievris Gannett;on Censorship In B column la.st Thursday (4) in the N, Y. Herald Tribune on the baiwing of the novels,'^Gentleman's Agreement" and "Focus" from New York City high school libraries. 1-ewiS Gannett revealed that in t taUc to a group of high school mag- . azine editors shortly after the ban- ning of Howard East's "Citizen, Tom Ptttoe" about a year ago, he di.scov- 9t6& that nearly all had read and re. viewed the book, many having - bought it with their own money. ' When he talks to another .such group this week,'the Herald Trib bterary critic added, he expects the Laura . Hobson and Arthur Miller novels Will head the list of books read and " reviewed. In the concluding paragraph of the column, Gannett wrote, "If 'Gentle- man's Agreement' and 'Focus' arc to be barred, as some odd characters close to the (school) board are urg- ■ ing, the whole list should^ be recon- sidered. If such a task of censorship W to be performed, however, I think * it would be healthier to cut out much of the stultifying sap and tripe at present clogging the 'approved' lists •nd let the children read the thought- provoking hooks which,, in or out ol school, they are sure to discover." Dr. Leo Handet, .Uterrogntor March issue of Blue Boot^ mag features a story titled"The Interro'- gators," built around actual combat 'experiences in Italy of Dr. Leo Handel, now director of Metro's audience research bureau. Story was written by lb Melchior, who served with Handel in the in- telligence service during the war and is now setting, up an indie film pro- duction outfit.: Harry Martin's Spot Harry Martin, president of the American Newspaper Guild, amuse- ment editor of the Memphis Com- mercial-Appeal and Vahietv mugg >h Memphis, says he has been barred ' from attending a Geneva conference on freedom of information because, some years ago, he made a donation JO the Southern Conference for Human Welfare. In a phone conversation with a Washington reporter, Martin said he hadn't applied for a passport, but wat several people" in the State J^epartment thought" be ought to be Wcluded in the American delegation jO the Geneva parley and one of w«« who sought to have his name Vm on th^ list has been turned down an advance of .1200 ($804) and j the Declaration of Independence. But the rugweavers weren't very good royalties, being 10% on the first 2,500 | at spelling. He even considered their weaving a miniature reproduction of copies, 15% from 2,500 to 5,000 copies | the Statue of Liberiy. Then somebody suggested that the rugwesivers and 20% on all o.ver 5,000. reproduce a $10,000 bill. The Authors League of America has invited representatives of Scrib- ner, Doubleday, Harper, Houghton- Mifflin, Random House and Knopf to meet its committee consisting of Oscar Hammerstein, 2d, John Her- sey, Christopher La Farge, Erik Barnouw and Luise SiHcox on the question of book censorship. Other publishing houses will be asked to send spokesmen to later session. Truman Hooper CUATTEIB Lotte Lchmann's "My Many Lives" will be issued March 20 by .Boosey & Hawkes. Newsweek's Sam Halper to the Coast this week to do some Holly- wood pieces. Harry Scherman, Book-of-the- Month prexy, seeing fUm production in Hollywood. Thornton Delehanty to Mexico City to do newspaper yarn on the film industry there. Frank Neill succeeded Milt Bar- ker as columnist and head of the INS bureau in Hollywood, J, The Newspaper Guild of N. Y. will hold its annual Page One ball May 5 at Manhattan Center, N. Y. Norman Lewis' new book, "How to. Speak-.Better , English," wi,ll be published next • Tuesday (16) by Crnwoll. Miix Steiner, composer of film scores, finished his book. "My Way of Scoring," for fall publication by Doubleday. "Passing Through to Broadway." by Elinor Hughes. Boston Herald drama critic, will be published March 31 by Waverly House. ' Walter W. Wrifigins, formerly with Brentana's, joined George T. Bye lit- erary agency, as office manager, suc- ceeding the late Jasper Spock. An omnibus Clarence Dsiy volume, "The Best of Clarence Day," to be published by Knopf. It's Book-of- the-Month dividend for April and May. The Australian and New Zealand rights to Charles O'ConncU's "The Other Side of the Record" have been sold by Knopf to Invincible P CSS, Sydney. American Mercury, in cooperation With Liitte, Brown, has. lavnched.its cool for comfort. Continoed from page Z mitments. Sholem A-sch passed through for a quick look at the island. Regular.s are philosopher John Dewey and dancer Sally Rand, both of whom have homes here. Thelma Strabel, author of "Reap the Wild Wind." had a home on the island for several ydars and news- papennan- Bob Allen still has. Biggest b.o. attraction Is Ernest Hemingway's home, a $50,000 show- place (now owned by a former wife) which he bought for $3,600 in back taxes during the depression. Hem- ingway still drops in from Cuba for an occa-sional lookin at his favorite Key West bars. Many of the pro- vincial Conks haven't forgiven him for his treatment of some of the town characters in "To Have and To Have Not" and get livid at mere mention of - his name. Audubon, the bird man, who lived here in the last years of his life, is pretty much the local hero. : WKWF Goes li Alone WKWP, a iiOO-watt fuUtime outlet, is the town'.s only station. It has to compete with Miami airers and even more with a score of Havana trans- mitters which hog the Cuban audience here. Key West's population is about evenly divided between Cubans and Americans, which doesn't help WKWF's -sales -staff. Cuban govern- ment, incidentally, is much in evi- dence, runs an art school and con- j ducts free Span i-sh le-ssons here. | The uptown Concha liotel and dozens of beachside motels shelter mo.st of the tr.insients. The Ocean View, which combines hotel and cottage rentals, is managed by Sarah Gibney, onetime Broadway actress, Fashionwi-se, the new look hasn't hit Key West and living, outside the plush Casa Marina hotel with its Waldorf prices, is extremely simple. Presidential adviser Les Biffle al- legedly has an interest in the Casa, vvhich i-sn't hanging out SRO signs by any means despite a fairly good .season. Miamians rush to the Casa when the weather there, jets too While the owning of one of these seemed to be the ambition of most Americans at the time (and practically all foreigners) Max Linder de- cided that few people ever saw one and, 'besides, he personalj^ favored the reproduction of a currency more commonly used by the common people... ■ ■■■ Rtst'UN-Front Money? . ■ So he tossed a handful of francs in the Paris bourse and came home with a (J. S. .silver certificate of one dollar denomination bearing the authentic signature of U. S. Treasurer Frank White. He then had the bill blown up 115 times its normal size and after that he put to work the rugweavers division of what must have been the first front-money for the United Nations. Max Linder figured that the tapestry job in French francs cost him around a half a million, and even today, what with'the bouncing and jouncing of foreign currencies and the inflating and deflating of our own, the rug is worth over $15,009. Eugene Linder came into possession of it by inheritance. Max Linder was his uncle and Max willed it to Gene when he died. But there 9 , lot of difficulty with the French government before the work. of . art. could ' be cleared. Gene had to make several 'trips to France to. get Ms magic carpet oft the hook and ride it hom6 to Los Angeles.- It met a lot of obstacles getting into the U. S. too, but was finally passed as a "counterfeit de luxe." The T-men, however, advised it to be kept under wraps. And so it was until the War Bond drives in 1942 when it was decided 'hat displaying it might stimulate patriotic thrift rather than the printing and passing of counterfeit money. Thereafter it was displayed in store windows, put on exhibition by art dealers, and even Mike Romanoff, the prince of royal counterfeiters, showed it in his deluxe, restaurant RobinsonrGianninl Nix Buy Edward G. Robinson spent a half hour trying not to buy it. A great art lover, he finally decided that as beautiful as it was as a work of rug- art, he'd' get pretty tired after a year or two of hearing variations of the gag that "'Robinson loves money so much he hangs it on the wall." A place where such a criticism could hardly tbc lev^lJed (without, peril of the critic joining, the unemployed) was the banks. So Gene Linder next headed for them. He remembered that A. P. Giannini not only financed motion pictures but used to get paid annually with a dollar check for his services as chairman of the board of directors of: the Bank of America. On A. P.'s retirement Linder thought it would be cute if the various officers gave the retiring head of the bank this beautiful reproduction of a dollar bill instead of a final one dollar check. But the scheme fell tlVough because A. P.'s, appreciation of the art of engraving Stopped with the work turiied out by the U..S. Mint. After that the rug wove its way in and out of bankwindows, department stores, chain store-s, radio programs, theatre lobbies and bathing oeauty : contests, ..' Assigned To Treasury Practically everywhere it .sent some biusybody to the police. The in- formers remembered the law against reproducing money and putting same on pviblie display. Tliis happened so often that the Treasury Depart- ment and the Department of Justice combined their efforts to give Linder a clean bill of health. There must be a great deal of salesmanship in the guy, however, for in Washington while trying to get these clearances he almost sold the rug to the administration for the Secretary of the Trea.sury's inner sanctum. What finally blocked the deal was the realization that Congress would, have to be brought in sooner or later, and the fact that the rug had orig- inated in a foreign country would set, it was felt, every member of the Un-American Activities Committee baying like a hound at a foxhunt. The only hope now for such a consummation is for some art lover fwho Ls also a patriot) to buy it and present jt to the Treasury Department. Meanwhile, with the hope of stimulating this solution of GeneUndt/s hot buck I am offering my cut in the rug to any rug-cutter who can get me off Linder's hook. AH I want for myself is all rights of these beau- tifully woven words about a unique pit-ce of tapestry. If you'd give $15,000 to see what a dollar looks like, take it up direct witii Gene Linder. I'm 1 busy On my Income tiqt