Variety (Mar 1949)

Wednewl«y, March 2, 194? Literati Newspaper. Mag Reaflinif st Peak . Wpwspaper and magazine read- i«i in the U. S. has reached its Srpatest peak, according to statis- obtained from the 19^ edition nf N W. Ayer & Son's Directory nf Newspapers and Periodicals, l isted in the directory were 445 new publications started last year; Uf those, 18 were magazines of gen- eral circulation. Newspaper publi- cation, both daily and weeltly, was tacreased by 307. jjJie directory also revealed that the'number of subscriptions and newsstand sales of periodicals reached a total of 229,000,000 per issue, while daily newspapers reached an alltime high circula- tion of . 52,097,872 per issue. Miss McGUl Death Ends Fund '' Passing on Feb. 15 of Eliza Mc- GUli 78, secretary to the late Dr. Tjilcott Williams, first director of {he Columbia Graduate School of °JoucfiaMcm, ends a fund which in- volved many $how- business and literary celebs, for the past several fears, Miss McGilli who suffered rom arthritis, was helped by a 'lund contributed to by many of the jnBtt She had helped. Among them Were publisher M. Lincoln Schus- ter; Lester Markel; Sunday editor of the New York Times;. Gerald Sl>iero, of Spiero-Kayton; econo- inijSt Merrylle S.. Rukeyser; pro- ' ducer-composer Arthur Schwartz; 'Kind Howard Dietz and Si Seadler, of Metro. She died in Evansville, Ind., wliere She: moved last year. Due From Doubleday ■ . H. Allen Smith, A. J. Liebling and ' W. ; Somerset Maugham have neW' books; due soon via Doubleday. "'Low and Inside,"' co-authored by. Smith and Ira L. . Smith (no rela- lloii), "Mitik and Red Herring." a second collection of Liebling's New •Yorker pieces, and "Quartet," the 'four' Maugham stories already filmed by J. Arthur Rank, are the titles. : Also slated by Doubleday is "How to Play the Piano," penned by Jacques Fray and Dr. David Saperton; former is the first clas- sical disc jockey. Joseph Fields workins on drama- tization of "Mrs. Candy," by Robert Tallant. UTBRATT 61 list is issued, there will be a meet'^ Ing held to discuss the identifica-' tion with stories. athy exhibited by the Abbey Theatre directorate and by many of , — _ l"s friends could not crab the fact Ad, run by Nu-Fab Co., consisted Most Expensive Ad ; Chicago Sunday Tribune ran the most expensive single advertise- ment to appear_ in a newspaper. SCULLY'S SCRAPBOOK that a new and creative artist had brightened the horizon and given the. decadent Irish theatre a re- vitalizing shot in the arm. But the bitterness engendered resulted in O'Casey's departure for London, and his valediction to Eire is con- jury in words. A final ironic cir- cumstance is made manifest in that the actors of the Abbey wild joined in , thp controversy against him, years later presented this play and others of O'Casey, in America, to their great renown and plenty dividends. Smit, By Frank Scully of rayon fabric' material which ran through the presses . as regular, newsprint; carrying an advertising '. niessag^.'^ktolliiii; the product as a cleaning cloth. Ohe-tlme ruh fiOst $^^^ in- cluding the cost of- 440,000 square . yar^s of material. ■'.■: ■ ' ,, ■ ',■;{ CHATTER ^'i ' Sprague Talbpt^ camera ace for' Look mag for four years, is step- ping out to work on his own. ] Publicist Arthur Miller .starting weekly pieces for Collier's, "Among Chi Sunday H-A to 15c interviewing celebs Chicago Herald-American, one , Windsor French in Hollywood of the last of the Hearst papers to , for a month to round up column. keep the 10c tag on Sunday edi-1 ™»terial for the Cleveland Press., tion, switches to 15c March 6. His-! "Knife and Fork in New York," i ing cost of newsprint and labor restaurant guide, being completely caused hike, according to Hearst i revised by Doubleday for August I official. . . publication, While there is no immediate j Cosmopolitan mag will publi.sh' prospect that other Sunday papers, I Elick Moll's yarn, "Purple Like Tribune and Sun-Times, wiU I Grapes," with 20th-Fox paying change their 10c price, Sun-Times I $35,000 for the filming rights, is holding management huddle i Clifford Odets dedicated "The' with one of the major issues being Big Knife" to Dr. M. V. Leof, father ; price raise for both dai y and Sun- .of legit p.a. Madi Biitzstein, for the \ day editions. Daily S-1 is now 4c., forthcoming published edition of the play. ■ ■ : .. ' ■ ■ j Fire destroyed the publishing i i plant of three Chicago suburban newspapers Monday (28). Building hpUsed Cicero Life,- Betwyn Life and Stickney Life;; Bing Crosby did introduction, to "Gdlf: A: New Appirdach/' authored by Lloyd Mahgrum, 1948 golf champion, due for April publicfc tion by Whittlesey House. Holiday mag devoting its entire Trask Buys Penn Play Co. The Penn Publishing and Play Co. of Philadelphia, iii biz since 1890, was sold last week to Frank- lin Trask, summer stock operator. Trask, who controls 14 strawhats, and the Brattle Hall theatre in Cambridge, will operate from Ply- mouth... Mass.v. where, all mail or- ders will be handled. Penn Play Coi also acts as agents for Samuel French, Dramatists I Play Service and Baker's. The Philadelphia office will- remain in operation. March 16 issue to coverage of New York City, with special features on city's government, art, commerce, hotels, show biz and night life. March issue of Mademoiselle to carry article on trials and tribula- tions of freelance writing, featur- among others, the career of Ask Gallico Ouster Expulsion of Paul Gallico from the Authors League was demanded in a message sent to Oscar Hamr mewteln II, league prexy, by 15 members of the National Council of Arts, Sciences and Professions. ■ iThe group scored a column un- 4er Galileo's byline, in the N. Y. doumal American Feb. 22^ which was the story of a Russian father of today telling his son in dialect his version of the George Washing- ton cherry tree episode. NCASP writers labeled the column "anti- Semitic." The McCoy on O'Casey Sean O'Casey, turbulent Irish genius of the Abbey Theatre Play- ers in Dublin, presents a further Vol. of his autobiog, "Inishfallen Fare Thee Well" (Macmillan, $4.75). Like the three preceding books of his tough and contentious career up from the docks of the River Liffey, this one too, will be her- alded by literati circles with the acclaim not always granted to his controversial and explosive dramas. From the coal dust of Dublin's dockyards to the star dust of the more rarified areas proved no easy That Hub Censor Again Boston's book banning process is again under fire, this time by Knopf, New. American Library of | mg. World Literature and Duell, Sloan 1 Helen Colton. ex-VARiETY muggess. and Pearce, who claim Massachu- i Louis Bromfield, Ohio author setts' law contravenes freedom of land farmer, has been selected as the press and deprives publishers I campaign chairman of a drive, to of their property without due i raise more than $100,000 in Ohio course of law. Books under question are "Ser- enade" and "God's Little Acre." Attorney General Francis E. Kelly had secured an interlocutory de- cree'finding the books obscene, in- decent and impure,. causing them to. be removed from book stands. Eire Lifts Huxley Ban Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World," banned by Irish book cen- sors in March, 1932, shortly after its publication, has just been re- moved from the banned list fol- lowing an application to" the Ap- peal Board. Kate O'Brien's "The Land of Spices," banned in 1941, has also been removed from the black list, together with. an English magazine, Argosy, which got the censor's red light a year ago. for mental health purposes. The seal sale will be sponsored by the Ohio Mental Hygiene Assn. Lester Markel, Sunday editor of the N. Y. Times, investigates the effect of U. S. propaganda abroad in "Public Opinion and Foreign Policy." He planned the volume as well as edited the work of such contributors as Times staffers Han- son W. Baldwin, John Desmond, Cabell Philipps, James Reston and Shepard Stone.; Harpers is pub- lishing in March for the Council on Foreign Relations. New Par Co Continued from page □ I to be part of a primary obligation I of $17,500,000 which the new the- i atre company is assuming. Latter sum, in turn, evolves from an origi S & S UpS Blackwcll Betsy Talbot Blackwell, editor . ^ in-chief of Mademoiselle-mag, has ^al $25,'000,000 "crecWt set Up by been elected to board of directors Paramount several years ago :with of Street & Smith Publications, a flhanciaj syhdicate headed by tbe first femme so honored in com- Flibst National iB^k of Chicago". pany's 94-vear-old history. , . Out of $10,000,000 drawn from ^ As result, Miss Blackwpir has the $25,000,000 credit, $4,500,000 given up the, post she also held as j. -till owine This sum will be ElitirSrSl Evan'^s^'Sion 'd,- on convertible notes to Bala- PuUm;n^'umD W^hV^mnl^^^^^^^^ merchandise director of Liv-," »'so be cleared "P- The J""'P the unmthodox ed-in-chiet po.st. ■ "^w theatre circuit incidentally, " I will receive $2,000,000 in cash from I this latest financial transaction. "O'Casey. . Having learned about poverty, Irish politics and playwrighting during the early hardpan years, .Wis articulate and impassioned 29i/t'% in DuMont Par owns 29i'S% in DuMont consisting of' 43,200 shares of A stock and 560,000 of B stock. Com- pany paid $560^000 originally for Goodrich Buys Trentonian Edmund Goodrich, former com- ^„ ., , - - posing room superintjendent of the ■postie of the Dublin tenement, Philadelphia Record, has pur- Biums had established himself, by chased The Trentonian. Trenton, ms late 30s, as Ireland's greatest | n. J. daily newspaper founded in thP THcV.'''"^';"""'^- ^^'■"Pe.lled by 1946 by the International Typo-, fhese holdiri'gsT'Last^reATTt ad me Irish Players, then in their graphical Union. Purchase price : , irpripral rnmmnniratinnq l}|5ty prime., his first. productions was^ot disclosecK Tlie paper was ^ S by^ieVm"ercan N^wtp PC? ■ for $7,000,000.. Since the prod-dis- Guild shut down the Trenton f t"b unit .is^ given the^ stock, the Times newsiiapers. fu^ realized on it will go to the Goodrich, who now lives in New! lot. (Juno and the Paycock" and "The ' J'ough and the Stars," 1925-26) definitely notched him as the HI*!, Portrayer of comedy and • pathos, native in idiom, savage in . irony and never-sparing-the-whip In realism. realism. i. The fourth book of his Odyssey inrough life brings one close to ■ jne terror and drama of the Easter- ■ week rebellion (1916), the .sniping «„i m streets, the dread Black- . *?n raids, the summary road- . HUe executions. Lightening his ground, you're with him as he ifcj elbows with the Dublin gods ™S half-gods political, theatrical «na literary. His first stabs at one- {F^Piays, his intimate closeups of ilf/alera, Yeats, Lady Gregory 5?° others, and his first drama hit «i the Abbey, give the reader a • ii.®**^® w"h nary a drag. 4»«1 u oawning of his first produc- by the critics, and the antip- York, was executive vice-president of the Bronx Home News before it merged with the New York Post. Chi Journal Polit. Tag Chicago Journal of Commerce is labeling its news stories with po- litical tags. Such items are brack- eted with individual's or group's association with any or all of 564 organizations which have been Homeoffice building and theatre will Ultimately ; be sold. , Current negotiations are being pushed with Priidential Ijif e Insdrance Co. Ask- ing pricii is $12,000,000 or there- abouts and the new company has five years to close the deal. While the exact cash holdings of parent company has not been disclosed, Par had $45,000,000 in labeled as Communist or Comnum-1 that bracket at the end of 1947. ist-front by governmental agencies | Additionally, its film inventory and the house Committee oft Un- j (,j,rne to another $45,000,000. American Activities. Neither of these assets have been Journal, Chi s affiliate of the Wall Street Journal, said it would depleted substantially. Hence, the 4. ^^-j ctfMtn '.o Wntficf new production outfit goes to bat ^^I'ce'accirdinl trirno'suclf ofil: with Approximately $120,000,000 cial list exists. If and when such a , m liquid holdings. . ^- Hollywood, March 1. The vei-y iught President Tvuman was calling Drew Pearson those fighting words in Washington, Hollywood was catching highly flattering closeups of the columnist in Maxwell Shane's production of "City Across the River." In fact Pearson both opened- anddoscd the opus and did his pitch for ways to reduce juvenile delinquency very well." Unlike almost any other public character when confronted with the dual responsibility, of looking into a camera and talking intelligently at tlie: same time. Pearson never once looked down at his. .not^'ft^d never once stumbled on his way to the Ultimate; fade. For a; 'l;$idii(<$i^j^ed ' guy, additionally, he photographs okay: While okay-too foi? Sound, his voice has defects! As in radio, he is on the.adenoidal .side and by no means an FDR. But he is an amazing fellow for keeping in the news while writing about the news. The week which culminated in the ^President's blast at him began with: an expose of his radio programs wherein he tossed some mud at Father Charles Coughlin, a pastor long silenced to his parish, in Royal Oak, Mich.; Over the ABC hookup Pearson alleged that ; Father Coughlin had paid $68,000 to a Dr. Bernard F. Gariepy"of Royal Oak for alienating the affections of Gariepy's wife. Father Coughlin, Dr. Gariepy and the doctor's former wife all denied; this Pearsonian inside story. In fact, they , described it as vicious slander, reminding one and all that President Roosevelt, had previously called Pearson a chronic liar; and that Pearson had subsequently been voted by his Washington colleagues as the most influential but least: reliable of capital correspondents. ■ ; ..■ On Friday, Feb. 18, the Tidings.: a diocesan paper in Los Angeles,- , gave a. column oti its front page and ran over five columns on Page 11 v denouncing the eminent insider, his radio .program and his character -: generally. ;.--^.; To what payoff? The very next day, Pearson came into Los Angeles with the French Merci train, France's grateful response to the Pear-, son-sponsored Friendship train. Subsequently he heard himself praised by Governor Warren, Mayor Bowron. Harry Warner and some badly translated French notables as something a little short of the savior of • mankind. .These tributes to Pearson went over the air and; certainly fouled up the blast which the Tidings had directed against his prestige .. and pei\son. Two days later the President sa.w fit to express his unexpurgated . . opinion of Pearson, and as far as Hollywood was concerned that was nullified by the Maxwell Shane employment of Pearson as the valiant ; defender of youth and a crusader for the elimination of slums, which Pearson said he believed were ethe chief source .of the j. d's. Charmed or CHarmine Life? [ Unquestionably this guy leads a charmed life and has been doing I SO ever since he and his pal, Col. Robert Allen, first published their ! "Washington Merry Go Round" anonymously, got fired from their paper when their anonymity was exposed, and have both gone on to I amazing journalistic heights ever since. Their climb has been through I the device of perpetually'exposing. others, and even after they went . their separate ways their mill kept grinding out the same gainful grist.-; 1 " The day Mr. Truman took him on Pearson was visiting the Graiid 1 Canyon for the; first time in his life; the Santa Fe. having extended to i him and the French Merci train the hospitality of an overnight stay of the El Tovar. Pearson confessed that there were no inside stories to be written;; about the Grand Canyon, and that he, supposedly an expert at crouch- ing under the White House Cabinet table, was the last person to con- sider himself qualified to write about the canyon. So he spent a good deal of his space describing the effect it had on four French railroad- men who also were seeing it for the first time. Nothing new came out of their comments, nor his observation of i their comments, but it. was a nice way to get through a day while the • i Prez was trying to make him the patsy of the press. There is no question that Pearson has carved out for himself a [ niche in American journalism that is recognizable and substantial. Based on; gossip, it has substance. It's as if an old reporter of the Police Gazette should work himself up to a Ph. D. ' He seemingly isn't interested in scandal per se; :He is a. demon, for , hunting out the news behind the news. I Take His Word For It I The surprising thing is that so many papers are willing to take his word for so many things which he couldn't possibly-have overheard first hand.-■■ -,■■■'.-.■■■■--..■.•.;■ ■.■ 1 He always writes as Jf actually he were under the table, quite sober, : - and his ears as-wide open as a beagle's: His radio predictions of things- to come were as fantastic in the main as a gypsy palmist's. But every- body felt these prophesies were merely'teasers to hold audiencerin- . terest and satisfy a sponsor who felt that Pearson lacked Wincheli's showmanship and had better simulate .it, or else. Both these columnists, incidentally, have hopped in and out of more hot water than anybody since Benvenuto Cellini, and Tom Paine, Unlike Pegler, who has concentrated practically all his fire on the Boeseyelts, labor and mobsters, Winchell and Pearson have ranged all the.way^ from Peron to Peruna. Several times they have sought to reduce the conflicts to personalities and now and then, as in the case of Pearson under three presidents, have ;sncceededv . 1 Winchell has had his quota of Hollywood attention bwt Pearson has somehow been neglected. There's a picture in-him obviou,sly; Why not the Friendship-Merci thing? Like Stagecoaeh;-'lt has the .first quality, of a good movie. At least:-it moves. • His personal history is a bit unusual too. Bom in Evanston, the Athens of Chicago, educated at' Phillips-Exeter and Swarthmore, he married a countess in Washington about 25 years ago,, dissolved that one, married Cissie Patterson's daughter and moved-the old mother- in-law fight to a literary plane until she fired his column out of her own paper. 1 This Friendship Train type of extra journalistic activity is not new to Pearson either. He was directing social services -among .Serbs, ; Montenegroes, and Albanians as far back as 1919. . He -taught indus- , trial geography at Columbia. He lectured over, the: Chautauqua circuits : He interviewed Europe's 12 greatest men. He hopped- around Japan, - China. Siberia. He rode on the coattails of Frank • Kellogg; when he 1 was secretary of state and got everybody to sign an anti-war treaty in Paris (with tommyguns, as it turned out.) He lieaded one of the best writing teams of his time. He and Allen needled Washington into being not only the No. 1 news spot of the world but the liveliest. They even turned their less plausible stories- into a comic strip, where anything is believable. 1: Came the war and Allen. enlisted and was kicked up.stairs to be; Patton's press agent; only to see Pearson exposing the general for - slapping a sick soldier. By then Col. Allen couldn't even slug his old pal, having lost an arm in combat. There is mo question about it. Pearson has become tiie: Richard Harding Davis of his time, ahd in many respects lots more believable When reduced to the documentary demands of a modem picture [audience. I i 1. i>'*.w.M-;