Variety (June 1949)

1949 Mencken’s ‘Chrestomathy’ H L Mencken has gathered a , « .election of his out-of-pnnt **^S?ncs into “A Mencken Chres- iKnopf, $S). The chrcs- Shy (meaning a collection of 'ffe Passages from an author) n- Pieces from his “Preju- SJs’’ "A Book of Burlesques” .Id other tomes, as well as from Se iconoclast’s jottings from the American Mercury. Smart Set and fiStimore Evening Sun. Scissored short takes, they’re pre.sented imder subject titles, such as Odd 'F?sh Quackery, Literati. Music.- Souvenirs of a Journalist, the Less- ee Arts and Buffooneries. * l^soite the fact that much of it written a generation ago. Mencken’s pungent comment and deft style stand up. His prejudices are sharply phrased, for example. “The most modest of actors matches the conceit of the solitary ■ on a slow ship.” The l. iok dozens of his l trbed like “A man may oe a know it—but not if There Ferber, Dorothy Parker. Margaret Leech Pulitzer, George S. Kauf- man, Harold Ross and Peggy Wood. A guide to those who went to know more about music for radio and television listeners will also be published under the title “The Good Housekeeping Guide to Musical Enjoyment.” George R. Marek. music editor of Good Housekeeping mag, authored the work. “Come One Come All” written by Don Freeman and Francis Wallace’s “The Notre Dame Story” are also set for publication. girl reprises maxims, fool and not he Is married.” There are essays and fantasies, including his famous hoax on the history of the bath- tub. which was mistaken for^fact and incorporated into medical books and standard reference works. Among his highly spiced esti- mates of a variety of Americans are analyses of Aimee Semple Mc- Pherson. Calvin Coolidge. Ring Lardner, Theodore Drei.ser. Jack Dempsey and Rudolph Valentino. Of the silent pic star Mencken says that his unhappiness stemmed from the fact that he was “catnip to women.” « Bril. Frazier's 'Farewell* to Bing? George Frazier, in the August issue of Cosmopolitan, will explore the possibilities that the current batch of top crooners have seen their better b.o. days. Article. "Farewell to Crosby?” takes the stance that not only Bing, hut the high-riding crew of imitators and latcher-onners are meeting a down- word wave in public reception. Frazier, onetime Variety con- trib, touched on a similar theme when reviewing disks for this paper. Redbook’s Editorial Revamp Editor of Redbook mag for some 22 years, Edwin Balmer has been upped to associate publisher and will continue with the organization in an advisory capacity. New Edi- tor, effective Aug. 1. is Wade Nichols, who moves over from Modern Screen mag. Replacing Nichols at MS is Wil- liam Hartley, formerly the mag’s managing editor. At MS’ editorial helm since 1948, Nichols was editor of Radio Guide and Scr6en Guide before the war. Hartley at one time was managing editor of Click mag. Another MS addition is Carl Schroeder, who becomes western manager. I Mademoiselle’s Guest Eds The August college is-sue of Mademoiselle is being edited with the aid of 20 guest editors se- lected from 800 campus corre- spondents at leading universities. The co-eds. assigned to various de- partments on the mag, are work- ing for a month in Street & Smith’s N, Y. headquarters and are also being feted around G»)tham. Projects set up for the I gals include a backstage party at ! “Goodbye. My Fancy,” screening of "The Heiress.” formal dance at the St. Regis Roof, tour of the Uniteud Nations, interview with Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt and a dinner at the Stork Club. interested parties, and .soon had it.s circulation well up over 5,000. For some time^ it has been on news- stands in Kansas City, Chicago and New ^ork. but has not been na- tional heretofore. Masthead continues to list Don- ald Dwight Davis, publisher; Mori i Greiner, editor; Bet.sey Sheidley. I a.ssistant editor; Don Fitzgerald, art editor; foin Collins, humor editor; Jetta Carleton, contributing editor; rp o *^*‘*?*’^‘‘*>’.* music editor; John r. Schilling, circulation manager. Bantam Books Gifts Sailors Great Lakes sailors will not lack for reading niatter on the slow bulk carriers this season, as Bantam Books, Inc., has made a gift of 1 10,000 volumes, all of current titles,' ' American Merchant Marine Library .\ssn., which turned over Uie whole batch to its branch li- brary at Saul Ste. Marie, Mich. i 3d Issue of Heritage The third issue of Heritage, the $25-a-copy picture mag, contains some striking monuments of Amer- ican culture with over 350 paint- ings. photographs and etchings re- produced in its 228 pages. Launch- ed last January by publisher Mal- colm Forbes, latest edition contin-« ues accenting the historical and j cultural heritage of America and : its people. j Published six times a year at an annual cost of $150. the mag’s lim- ■ ited edition of 5,000 copies per is- ! sue has not been fully subscribed. Sales, however, are increasing from large corporations, libraries and educational institutions. The U. S. Army has also placed subs ' for Heritage in all information centers of Germany, Austria and Japan. SCULLY’S SCRAPBOOK »♦♦♦♦♦»♦♦»»»»»» By Frank Scully distinction. In man of distinc- Drake Settles Claim The $20,000 damage suit filed in the N. Y. federal court, last Janu-j ary against Bennett A. Cerf, Vam H. Cartmell, Random House and Garden City Publishing Co. charg- ing infringement of the copy- righted translation of Vicki Baum’s play"Grand Hotel,” has been dis- continued as against all the de- fendants in consideration of the payment of $400 by RH. William A. Drake, translator of the play, and Herman Shumlin, who suc- ceeded to the dramatic rights, had daimed that the inclusion of Drake’s adaptation, without con- sent, as part of the anthology. “16 ramous European Plays,” edited !• u Cartmell and pub- hshed by Modern Library and Garden City, was in violation of Drake s copyright. In addition to discontinuing the action. Drake has consented to the * of his adaptation in the anthology and the continued publi- cation tbereof without payment of any additional royalty. It was ex- plained that prior to publication nandom House had procured the of Vicki Baum, the author Joe play, in the belief that she nad full rights in connection there- with. The $400 payment w'as made in '“^0 of royalties which Drake would have received up to the P esent time and in the future if nla then been know n ftK* •" j consent had then been Obtained. Roeburt’s OK ‘Tough Cop’ Radio writer and noveli.st John Roeburt has drawn freely on the Broadway scene for characters and settings of his second novel, “Tough Cop” iSimon & Schuster; $2.50>. Many will readily identify the protagonist, Johnny Devereaux, with Johnny Broderick, the retired detective familiar to many show- businessites. Other characters, however, are merely a matter of guesswork inasmuch as Roeburt couldn’t go all-out in identification without risking libel and invasion- of-privacy sviits. Roeburt lets off some steam again.st pet peeves with some of his principals. The effeminate theatre critic who never had a kind word for any creative effort is finally identified as a dead-ender from Brooklyn and is ultimately liqui- dated. Another that bears a .strik- ing resemblance to known figures is a former prizefighter turned re.s- taiirant owner and painter. Roeburt takes his cast around familiar haunts and in the process, provides a readable and logical mystery for a good evening’s en- tertainment that won’t keen the reader up too late. Jose. Morehouse’s Book in Sept. Ward Morehouse’s “Matinee To- orrow (50 Years o£ Our Theatre” ^ September from Whittle- ••u Same pub bringing out Basic Motion Pic- ^ T^’chniques” by Emil E. Brod- eck and William Irvine’s “The GBS” later in the fall. Millard Lampell’s “The Hero” ^or .September publica- y® Messner. It’s already been •21; !•” Coli^mbia Pictures and was serialized in Cosmopolitan this 'Algonquin Round Table’ Tome fall 1 publications due this .‘"^lude Margaret Case Harri- TaK,®., Algonquin Round , Written by the daughter toe late Frank Case who owned of book is about **®^*'^ table” personalities Woollcott, Heywood “roun, Franklin P. Adams, Edna / I ) II I I Quick Preems As Weekly .Mter a five-week tryout in 75 towns and cities. Quick, a weekly pocket newsmag summary of the previous weeks happening, was put on sale in New' York Thursday i22'. Priced at lOc a copy, the mag. published and edited by Gardener Cowles, is currently being sold in 50 large cities and is scheduled for nationwide distribution .hily 14. Quick released in New York on Thursdays uses the following Mon- day for its publication date. Cowles, who al.so edits and pub- lishes Look mag. is recruiting the major portion of Quick’s executive .staff from the weekly pictorial. Dan Mich, exec editor of Look, will function in the same capacity for the new mag. Merle Armitage. Look’s art director, will hold down the same job on Quick. Managing editor for the mag will be Wood- row Wirsig. who relinquishes his position of assi.stant managing edi- tor on the parent mag. His suc- cessor has not yet been named. Ed .Stout and Morris Weeks have both been named assistant manag- ing editors for the new publication. WIIB's Swing Hits t’.S. Newsstands Swing magazine, which began as a promotion pit*ce for WHB. Kan- sas City, now goes on the news- stands nationally with the J'Jlv* August issue, out la.st week The fliso switches from h monthlj to a bi-monthly with the new na- tional distribution It continues at its established price of 25e. and has no changes in format or personnel. "Swing” is pocket size, with pic- tures and cartoons. WHB began the nriag about five years ago as a mailing piece to clients, agencies, friends and other , III 111 - .1 • ' ■ CHATTER ' Judith Cortada now associate editor of Radio Best. Peirce H. Powell in Hollywood to gander film celebrities for the /.on- don Star. Adolphe Roberts will spend the summer in Havana—and finish his new book. Ben Conlon. of Hillman staff, to Utica, hometown, for funeral of elder brother. Jack Galin new advertising man- ager of Tomorrow Magazine. For- merly with PM and The Star. Sylvia and Leonard Lyons sold , an original to Metro, “American Canva.ss,” dealing with a European painter. ' I Jean Hersholt is writing an ar- ticle on Hans Christian Anderson for TheiColophon. a periodical for bookmen. i Allan Hersholt is doing a series of yarns on Broadway and Holly- wood for the Masquers Club peri- odical, The Jester. Carl Schroeder slated as next west coast bureau chief for Mod- ern Screen mag, succeeding Tom Carlisle, w ho resigned, Martin Quigley, Jr., promoted from associate to editor of Motion Picture Herald. Terry Ramsayc to continue as consulting editor. Russell E. Smith cleaning up an opus, history of column writing. "Columnist From A to Y.” Says he can’t find one name beginning with Z. Dick Fehr, publicity head of Doherty. Clifford St Shenfield, has an article in July Redbook on va- cations in .New York of a $75 budget. Irving Dillard, member of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Pulitzcri staff since 1927 has been upped to Head of the editorial page, re- placing Ralph Coghlan who has been assigned to Europe where he will gather feature story material for the P-D. Margot Gayle, editor of Radio Writers Guild mag. Scriptwriter, has article in June issue of Read- ers Digest, with another on “South F'acifu ” upcoming in Holland's Magazine of the South and one on FCC commissioner Frieda Hen- nock in Harper’s Bazaar. WDSU Cnniiniird from pagr 26 40 feet high, will be equipped with a master control room in the cen- ter overlooking all studios, and will be patteini’d after the Holly- wood mo\ ie sound stages with overhead lighting, catwalks, pro- duction worshops. etc. The radio section, an area 60 by 60 feet, will consist of three stu- dios. a complete .setup for record- ing of all types, storage, and other technical facilities. Plans also call for a 40 by 60 workshop, lounge and reception halls where visitors can watch the “live ” telecasts and broadcasts. The studios will be constructed with an emphasis on functional ef- ficiency and with an eye to future expansion, Stern declared. Roiling Point. Cal.. June 25. Mervyn LeRoy has a hot secret he wants to keep in cold storage for a while and so he’s giving it to me to keep it out of the papers. He’s in New York right now shooting documentary atmosphere for “East Side. West Side, All .Ground I..eRoy,” and he figures if the secret gets out his local color will turn out to be yokel color. If curiosity-seekers run into retakes his name will be imid. if not Marcia Davenport, around the Metro front office, where they’re watching every dollar these days. I suspect he believes 1 work for the Yale Quarterly and am on a .sabbatical. In any event the last thing he suspects I am is a spot newspaperman. To prove this he told me he thought I’d be terrific in television, with my flock of white hair, my Washington profile, and the added advantage that I can speak my own lines without having to use actors as Washington would. I told him not to spend his time hunting a sponsor because 1 wouldn’t look at even rival gargoyles in television until sets come down to $100. 'I’lie big economy size, not the tintype portables that make even Gregory Peck look like Mickey Rooney. He saw he was getting nowhere trying to brush my gl.’imor into a com- petitive field, so he offered me soi.n of his cigars—the 60c jobs. I bowed out. “I quit eight months ago.” I told him. He wanted to know why. Scratch me anywhere and you find an extrovert. “I’m on a one-man sitdown strike against the smog, fog and grog that has become the city’s incomparable climate,” 1 explained. “Okay, what can you compare it to—Pittsburgh?” He grinned. He is the original Frisco Kid. though I understand his birth ceiUficate was burned in the earthquake. Who's Being Chumped Here? “You have influence." 1 pursued. “You’re a man of fact, if my information is correct, and it i."?. you’re THE tion. So why don’t you get the oil and tobacco tycoons together and ask the oil boys to agree to give us back our fresh air so I can lake up smoking your fine cigars again?” “You’ve got vision.” he said, “you’re the sort of mugg who should get behind my Motion Picture Museum idea. But not too far behind.” he warned on account he was an old gagwriter and saw a gleam that indicated I was heading that way myself. 1 told him the idea of a Movie Museum had set my hair on fire and the resulting whiteness on top of my head was the ashes. “But you will never get out of the paddtKk with it," I .said, “as long as you have to talk to fellow-producers who.se cultural limitations are hounded by racing forms, female forms and tradepapers. And in that order.” Musee du Roy We were lunching in a Hillcrest koshery store, amid a splendor un- known to the Rockefellers. Morgans. DuPonts, Carnegies, Nobels. Hunt- ingtons. Guggenheims. etc. “You know,” I said, “a man with a cause is already half-redeemed. You who have liked fast horses and anything that would screen, even ‘.Anthony Adverse,’ may find that the Motion Picture Museum to be built at all, will have to be built by a Committee of One Thousand— all called Mervyn LeRoy. These characters who call you ‘Merv’ and have been cleaning up for 50 years have got to reverse their field. Not one Carnegie Library, not one Rockefeller Foundation for Medical Research, not one Field Museum, not one Rhodes Scholarship, not one Nobel Prize for Literature has come out of Hollywood. "In fact, until producers show signs of such cultural kickbacks you can’t expect us gatemen of the literati to pass them under the canopy as civilized men. If you pull this museum off you’ll be the first one to be allowed to peek under the tent and see the Elysian fields where the immortals are perpetually on view and autograph hounds are unknown. And, remember, it’s not becau.se you’re the No. 1 Man of Distinction as viewed through the amber fluid in Lord Calvert’s bottles.” As I said this, he sat up. He had been slumping In his chair, won- dering, 1 suspect, how a guy who makes only $300,000 a year and has never been out of a job in his life could pull off a Museum of Motion Pictures all by himself. "What’s behind these oblique cracks about my manner of holding a highball?” he demanded. He Finally Got the Ears I told him I had .seen the documents, that he might like to tell how he had discovered Clark Gable in a road company of “The Last Mile” and how it took him 20 years to get Gable into an MGM picture. Or that he might not be adverse to discussing how one of the independent motion picture chains has named him as Hollywood’s No. 1 boxoflice director for consistently turning out the chain’s top grossers, such as “Gold Diggers of 1932.” "Tugboat Annie.” “Little Caesar,” “Five Star Final,” “1 Am a Fugutive From a Chain Gang.” “Anthony Adverse.” “The Wizard of Oz,” “Blossoms in the Dust,” “Madame Curie.” “Thirty Seconds Over Tokio.” “Little Women” and “Any Number Can Play.” But I had the goods on his rating among Men of Di.stinction. “And you got it where?” “It dropped out of an FBI gal’s purse.” I explained. “.And it .said what?” “It said, and I’m quoting from memory: ‘Dear Mr. Le Roy We have examined the Starch ratings of our Men of Distinction for the years 1946. 1947 and 1948. These ratings show the percentage of observation of our advertisements which have appeared in the magazines. 1 am very happy to inform you that you rated the highest of any of the men used in our .series.’ And it was signed by the president of the com- pany.” “Oh. it was? .And what was the president’s name?” ' Was It W. W. Wachtcl? I grinned but refused to aoswer. because the way things are going .these days you never know what might be used against you. He talked about the Smith.sonian Institute in Washington, he meant the Smithsonian Institution, but it was no time him). He talked about the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. “And all we’ve got in Hollywood are footprints in front of Grauman’s Chinese. Why, a Motion Picture Museum would become a mecca for tourists from all over the world. Scholars might like to research there. It would take a lot of heat off a much maligned industry, too. It could be a sort of Museum of Natural History and a Museum of Art combined. * “I’ve asked the Johnston office to appoint a committee to work on the idea.” he said. 1 looked on this vest pocket marvel of a marvelous biz and won- dered if I dared release the first subversive arrow'. The John.ston office, committees, sub-committees. ... I’d just as soon consult a plot of Fore.st Lawn that is holding the mortal remains of Irving Thalberg. Jim Tully, John Gilbert. Wallace Beery, Theodore Dreiser and other eminent men of extinction. Great changes are not the result of com- mittees but usually of one man’s vision, drive, salesmanship and sacrifice. That looks like Mervyn LeRoy is “it.” Of course, in France they may credit the magnificent obsession to “Mervyn King,” which would be only a fair exchange for his having changed Fernand Graavey. to Gravet. for fear people would pronounce it “Gravy.” But elsewhere he would be remembered as the lad who quit vaude (LeRoy and Cooper, “Two Kids and a Piano”». at $300 a week to work among the mothballs of the Lasky wardrobe department for $12.50. Certainly nobody began lower or climbed higher in Hollywood than Mervyn LeRoy. His first picture at First National was “No Place To Go.” starring Mary Nash and Lloyd Hughes. It was an honest title. It didn’t go anywhere particularly, hut by the time he got to “Little Caesar” they knew where he was going. He was going eventually to I “Little Women,” and for Hollywood that’s the $2 tour. H guess to correct • i 'f I ’• > I ( I