Variety (January 1954)

rf*.lnesd»Y, January 27, 1954 LITERATI 69 1 annual income of from $2,000 to $5,000. This is actually higher than Musical Courier Snitch muS Copier, oldest classical m5c mag in the U.S., now in its ff yejr. has changed ownership, c-nf the Feb. 1 issue. Biweekly, .*s.,°£h Lad been edited for 40 years ^Leonard Liebling until his artflth in 1945; had been handled then by brace Nylen asgen s manager, and badbeen re* as folding with the Janu *'lflIagSWhas’‘ been _ bought, fey Roy rJSiAurg, publisher of Review of Recorded Jdusic, who will be its nublisher. Gid Waldrop will he fJitor and general manager. Dr HeS $ l2vii*er, the .Courier* foreign and radio-tv editor, who S go-between, in the new purchase, will be chief critic and an editor. ; . % NeW Seventeen Publisher Mrs. Enid A. Haupt has been named as publisher of Seventeen macazine. She was formerly adSinfstrative assistant to Walter H, Annenberg, prez of Triangle Publications, which issues the . mag. She succeeds Mrs. Alice Thompson. who has been publisher and editor of Seventeen since May, 1950 : Seventeen also named Howard Bergman, sales promotion director to position of general manager. Mrs: Irene Kamp, formerly execu tive editor, becomes editor, Guide Post Nabs Fields Sidney Fields, N. Y. Mirror feature columnist, has been named a roving editor of Guide Post, nonsectarian inspirational type mag edited by Dr. Norman Vincent ^Current , and upcoming Issues of the magazine, published in CaTmel, N. Yi, and sold by subscription only, feature show biz personalities. Perry Como, spotted on the cover, has a byline piece in the current issue, while Marian Anderson will be the Subject of an article in the March number. York Times, The London Daily Mail, The Canadian Press, The Times of London, BUT the Toronto Daily Star. LowCr case When in doubt here." Stair editorialized amusingly, concluding, “The Star, to be sure, keeps “The" up in its own name and uses lower case for other newspaper names. But that’s just our pardonable self-appreciation! We don’t single out any one paper and small-t it. Malice is absent. We are just our kindly self." Dylan Thomas First Mademoiselle mag will have a literary first in its February issue with publication of Dylan Thomas’ play, “Under Milk Wood." Thomas handed his revised manuscript to Mademoiselle’s editors just a week before his death. The space devoted to a feature of this kind is unusual in fashion magazine history. The play is illustrated by pi k of Thomas in his native Welsh . vil I the overall* per capita income for the nation as a whole. Family for family, tens of thousands of educated colored citizens today are far better off, discrimination ' aside, than many of their uneducated backcounty white brethren. Very Loyal, to Brands What particularly and peculiarly impresses advertising agency acr count executives is the marked susceptibility of the Negro consumer to advertising appeals and, fiis distinct loyalty to respected brand names which trouble to woo him. The advertising problem is reaching the Negroes. The Motion \ Picture Advertising Service Co, of New Orleans which has specialized in sales trailers for exclusively Negro film theatres throughout the South incessantly reminds national advertisers that “In ail of the cities where there is a large Negro population the Negro community is by habit, and mainly by choice, a separate and segregated, community from the white community," The logic is clear. To reach the Negro consumer, the advertiser must use Negro media. This is the SCUIXY’S SCRAPBOOK >♦♦+♦♦>♦♦♦♦♦ »♦ »» Frank Scully hi* ♦ ♦ ♦♦♦♦ lage which inspired * thc play and is preceded by John Malcolm same sales pitch employed In put Brinnin’s tribute to him. Caedmon ting .over such new colored maga will issue the album of the play in the spring. The play is the one Thomas and professional actors presented at the 92nd St. Y M.H.A. in N. Y. on four occasions last year. Walter Abel heads cast doing a memorial benefit performance of “Wood” at the Y Feb. 8. Toronto Star Kids Rival Toronto Star (p.m.), largest daily in Canada, got hold of a copy of the new style book of its block-a wayneighbor the Globe and Mail (a.m.) second-largest (245,000) and long a bitter rival, ordering, “Capitalize the word ‘The’ in the name of The Globe and Mail, The telegram (Toronto’s other p.m.), The New novel about & magazine, arid 1 men it ■ ■ ■ ri and then made it into a deadly CHATTER Kermit Schafer’s “Your Slip Is Showing," collection of radio-tv boners, off the Grayson presses, Pete Martin in Hollywood to round up material for a yam about William Holden for the Satevepost. Jay Russell Has been named in charge of Gotham Guide’s .Westchester and Connecticut section. Russell has been a publicist for many years. ; Whitney R. Sponsler is publisher of the hew weekly Southern California mag, Encore, which ’tfill cover professional, community and educational theatre, R. A. Barford, Scot-born manager of Vancouver News Herald, named general manager of Scotsman Publications Ltd., Edinburgh, by the new Scotsman boss, Roy Thomson. Cartoonist-author Herblock to speak on “Civil Liberty: Right or Privelege?" at second annual uncheon-conference of N. Y. Civil iberties Union at Henry Hudson Hotel, N. Y., Feb. 6, The Irish Censorship of Publicaions Appeals' Board has revoked he ban on John Steinbeck’s “To a God Unknown.” Justin Kaplan’s With Malice Toward Women’’ also got the greenlight after an appeal. Richard Kleiner, who has been writing, a daily television column for the NEA syndicate, is expanding it to cover show business in general. It’ll be tabbed. “The Marquee." , , Dwight Marvin, 73-year-old edv tor ahid chairman of the board of The Record Newspapers in Troy, N. Y., is author of “The Faith I Found," published last week by Thomas Y. Crow’ell. This is his first book. Claude Hammerston, radio-tv-records editor of the Ottawa Citizen, has been elected Ottawa Newspaper: Guild (ANG) first vice-president, with Tony McGovern of the Journal circulation dept, as second. Bob Buchanan, Citizen reporter, is the new president. ziries as Ebony, Tan Confessions, Our World, and so on. In a single decade a colored publisher in Chicago, John H. Johnson, has parlayed a loan company’s $500 bankroll into a group of monthlies with over l.DOO.OOO circulation. Now ! only 35, Johnson has* made the j plausible comment, “Today’s Horatio Alger hero is black." Other Men’s Meat . Hollywood. As this is the time of the year vrhcn firm resolutions begin to falter, smokers -who swore off New Year’s Day begin to get irritable (sure sign of a relapse), producers who vowed to stick to their biz act ore anfipyed when secretaries find them reading The Racing Forum instead of this bible of show biz, secretaries in turn find themselves typing ‘*1953" instead of “1954," and columnists begin worrying about drying up completely before, the year Is out, perhaps a strong hand is needed to make these people stick to their fine resolutions. Mine has just been tested and it broke a testing machine at Ocean Park. So I feel mine is just the strong hand needed to help people over areas where the going is getting rough. I know how strong their temptations are for I, too, gave up smoking for 1954. This of course is not the first time. Through the years I have quit for six weeks, six months and once for three years. I. quit when I find I am chainsmoking,, particularly cigars. When a vice becomes the master, f heave the vice out the window as proof that rugged^ individualism is not completely dead. This time I gave up smoking for an even higher motive. It was not through fear of what might happen to my lungs if I didn’t quit that stopped me this time. It was for a high social motive. It came as. a result of a dream. I dreamt I was aboard a Tanner Tourist Saucer. The year was 2,020, the’ year of perfect sight. We were flying over Hollywood. It seemed as clear as the desert. I couldn’t imagine what happened to the smog fog, grog and hog-eat-hog that was making the place the biggest gas chamber in the world in 1953. Had it all been exported to New York and London, at a fancy figure? L. A. A Carthaginian Ruins? The pilot cleared up the mystery, “This is now known as the Carthage of the New World,” he said. “They used to make pictures of other people’s catastrophies here, tremendous productions that shook onlookers to their mukluks. All the while they were breathing something that, combined with the snipes they were smoking, made them dizzier than ao> authentic blonde. In fact, they didn’t wait to get hit with an alphabet bomb. They gassed themselves to death." He said something about a movement having been started in 1954 to force the tobacco, petroleum, tire and other tycoons to give the ! people back their free air (in the-streets as well as on radio and tv 1 the Wy CIIARLES WEHTENBAKER Al all baahilarM. . RANDOM HOUSE, N. V. zmmm ping" the Negro, not publishing news about him (except police court items), a gift of an important segment of the U. S. economy has been handed to such colored enterprisers as Johnson. Again quoting the. New Orleans advertising service, “Negroes' do not find themselves named and pictured, in the newspapers, radio and. tv stations which, influence the white community.” They turn to their own media where they are “named, pictured and recognized." Actually scores of white-owned radio stations have turned to the Negro, nbw that television is so competitive in the white market. Pu^lskers hj)v® to ^channels), but it petered out because even the reformers couldn’t make awaken to the fact that in ■ skipj a living out of it .It was started by some screwball named Scully, a quixotic character, and therefore doomed to failure from the start. I remembered the occasion, very well. It was in 1942. I had been in New York and was trying to wangle a new car to get me back to Hollywood*, I didn’t get it. Some months later a studio technician drove Op to our place and it looked for all the' world as if he had a new car. I was <all for I reporting him as a finagling slacker. He assured me it wasn’t a new car. “Just a new paint job. Wanna a new paint job?’’ “How much?” I asked. ,, “Nothing.” Free Paint For Lungs Too? \ He told me;, he had been down to Southgate, giving an idea to friends operating a Chemical defense plant and when he came out the paint was oft his car! He. barged back into the plant and asked what kind of payoff was this for a kind deed? They calmed him by filling out a blank, asking him to take it a mile down the road and his car would have a new' baked enamel job in a matter of hours: Meanwhile they would have lunch. It all went on the cost-plus operation which was from small Weeklies to the wire services and radio-tv are explained in “How to Get Your Name in the Paper,” 20-page booklet authored by Benn Hall . and published by Benn Hall Associates, indie public relations outfit. It will sell at $1. i standard procedure in those days. Network and a p®®kage^house , Fine,” I said, “but if it is doing that to cars now, what is it going to^be doing to our lungs in a few years?’’ “I wouldn’t know,” he said, “I’m moving into the desert to organize the Navajo silversmiths.” Since that day I have watched the smog creep slowly from Southgate, north to Los Angeles. Hollywood. San Fernando Valley and finally to the passes in an attempt to get some fresh air itself. As long ago as 1946 I warned Palm Springs to look out. By now the lethal stuff is ruining millions of dollars of crops and lousing up outdoor shooting of Hollywopd pictures. The reason for it is simple; Southern California has a high fog that rolls from the Sea inland for 60 miles. In fact, this is the reason why L.A. is not a cauldron in summer. But that ceiling, while a nice umbrella under normal conditions, has turned the community into a gas chamber, because with the increase in heavy industry the gaseous byproducts hit this ceiling, Can't go up and so come down and pour into people’s eyes, hoses and throats. Is there a solution? Of course. It operates on the first-come-first. > served principle. All the oldtimers have to do is to heave the new about the new status of the Negro . comers and their heavy industries -over the passes to Victorville or is this: few or no Negro film the-; xndio where the air is so thin their gases will head straight for the atres have closed in recent y®ars» J planet Mars, That might get the Martians sore but at least it will in sharp contrast with the h1?*} : save those in Southern California who produce nothing, worse than westerns. If this is true, how could such a catastrophe have crept up on these people? Easily. The area was sold originally to tourists looking for an all-year climate, a place that never got too hot in summer (because of that high fog) or too cold in winter (because there was less high fog then). The climate-peddlers cleaned up. Gruesome Parlay, What? But came the war and heavy industry moved into the area to speed up shipping to the South Pacific. The smart operators who lured the picture biz and healthseekers west now proceeded to work Ike other calling itself Negro Radio Stories, Inc., is peddling some four soap operas aimed at the colored housewife. Negro disc jockeys have become very common, and Negro station managers are not lacking. Noble Sissle is’ a fresh recruit to jockeying, having just joined WMGM, N. Y. • Those most expert in the problems of selling branded merchandise to Negro retailers have issued practical warnings. “Don’ts” include avoidance of racial slurs such as the double-g form of the word “Negro,” or a patronizing, or talking down, or overselling approach; Not the least arresting angle rate Of closings (several thousand houses) in the vvhite exhibitor ranks. C. J. Mabry has observed: ‘They aren’t losing patronage — they are gaining patronage.” Mabry-itemizes five effective advertising-sales approaches to the col Publicity possibilities extending ored community. Cl ) Negro commu nity participation events, (2) Negro point-of-purchase tieups* f3) raidio programs conducted by and | Side of the street and poison the oldtimers it had lured west previously. 1 5-Billion •$ Continued from page 1 intended for colored people, (4) newspapers and magazines. Finally (5) Mabry's own type of servicescreen trailers in to hit the filmgoers. Stricter Antidiscrimination Proposed at Albany Albany, Jan. 26, Discrimination because of race, creed, color or national origin in admission to places of public amusement, public and private em patronage. Of increasing visibility throughout the land are the big food, clothing, cosmetic, drug, whiskey, beer, insurance and auto . ....... businesses employing : Negro sales ployment, membership in labor orexecutives, market* consultants, ganizatlons, rentals and purchase pubUdsts and gladhanders. of real and personal property. Pur, Segregation again taken into ac chase of insurance policies, and adcount, the Negro has staged a phe mission to educational laws would nomenal upsurge of prosperity in be violations of the penal law, if a nomena p g introduced by Assemblyman Sidney H. Asch, Bronx Democrat, were enacted. Asch proposed that all such discrimination be placed under penal statute. A second measure sponsored by him defines civil rights in the provision prohibiting discrimination in places of pubic accommodaton and other areas to include equality of opportunity* nomenal upsurge 10 years, now has more and better quality newspapers, magazines, radio programs, theatres, churches, swimming pools and country clubs. It is no exaggeration to suggest that the average white American has practically no concept of ; this “commpnity within the community.” The migratory, jnobile and largely urbanized new generation of educated Negroes has an Poor Pasadena, which had brought in so much wealth, is now getting gassed worse than almost any other community. Beverly Hils and westward to the sea does not get the lethal stuff quite as potently as downtown; L.A., but it will in time because this is by no means ' a self-limiting disease. In fact I don’t see how it can be stopped unless heavy industry moves out or people move out. If and when it happens, it will be a bigger exodus than the migration from Egypt and maybe the sign will be, as it was then, that first-borns die on taking their first breath of the poisonous air. To date L.A. has spent millions trying not to face the issue. It’s the old issue of avarice versus survival. Since the guys Who made a fast buck by working both sides of the street are still in the saddle, it is just about impossible to expect them in an issue of people versus property to move their industries arid let the people, who were here first, stay. v The only way that could be done would be for the manipulators Of public opinion to scare the gizzards out. of big biz as to what will happen to the industries if Z bombs (much more devastating than A or H bombs) begin dropping from the skies, and that the only solution is to rhove to the desert and dissemble their plants while further concentrating their profits. For its own protection the picture biz might try its hand at. propaganda pix of this genre. They are very skilled at fabricating prejudices jvhose ends justify any means. I wouldn't say they need go so far as to manufacture atrocity pictures, but aided by the medical, arm (which discovered the lethal character of this smog in 1953, 11 years after X did) they ought to get the peasant stirred into a realization that he is fighting for his life. ~ . , , The tobacco people might join such a crusade because I always enjoyed a smoke more in. the desert than in town and, boy, would I enjoy one right howl