Variety (October 1954)

Wednesday, October 20 , LITERATI HI N. Y. Nm* Aatbon Loiue The N. Y. Daily News devoted its entire Sunday (17) editorial to its own talented crew of book writers, captioning it “The News Authors’ League”. Vet radio-tv editor Ben Gross’ Just - released memoirs, “Looked and I Listened” was the kickoff raison d’etre for the piece With his. thubibnail cut, along with other New? staffers Jimmy Pow- ers (sports), J.ohn Chapman (drama) and Robert Sylvester (Broadway heat), illustrating...»the editorial. The News also kudosed Hy Tur- kin, Dick Young, Joe Trimble, Carl Warren, Ruth Reynolds, Jack lams (copy desk, who authors whodunf: its), Kermit Jaediker and Robert Parker (ditto), Lowell Limpus, Maxwell Hawkins, Antoinette Don- nelly; Elinor Ames, Willella de Canipi, /who have written on sports, politics, theatre, fiction, fashions and eitiquette.' Even ad- man Vincent Sullivan has found time to turn out “How To Sell Your Way Into The Big Money” (Citadel; *3,95), due off the press this week. Concludes the News: “Does this prove anything? Probably not. Plenty of top-grade newspaper people never> write books, and plenty of book-writers couldn’t qualify for newspaper jobs. But it takes a. lot of stuff to be good in both categories. We’re proud of the big News authors’ league, and to ail of them, present and, expec- tant, we wish the best of luck and the most obese of royalty checks.” \ - feed alien’s press communique In characteristic Fred Alien man- ner, the covering note to the press, in connection with his new book, “Treadmill to Oblivion,” reads (in trademarked lowercase' Style) as follows: "i have written a book, , this is the first all-purpose book ever written, it isn’t the. book of the month, if you have no time.to read it this month this book ;is quickr frozen—it will keep until next ipnth. - “most boohs can only be used for reading purpose, this .book can be used as a coaster for glasses at cocktail parties, it can be slipped under a short child at the dinner table; if you have a cold in the- head the thin pages of this book can be used as Kleenex, it makes an ideal door-stop, this book has damp pages," during cold weather you do not have to wet your finger to turn them. “this, is also the first no-cal book, if you are trying to reduce, read one chapter a day on an empty stomach, watch the pounds disap- pear. “i am asking little, brown t who published ‘treadmill to oblivion,’ to send you a copy*, i hope you will enjoy it.” ■' Bonelli’s Bomb . When William G. Bonelli re- cently let go with a blast at the L.A. Times in a bbok entitled “Bil- lion Dollar Blackjack,” everybody waited for the ‘other shoe, to drop. They thought surely the Times would drop it, and on Bonelli’s head. .. 4 •Last- week It dropped. But the Times didn’t .drop it. Bonelli did. He dropped it on the head of the Times m the form of a $1,000,000 libel suit. Worsjt charge was that the. paper sought to tie Bonelli up with the Mafia gang. Suit said the paper had been given, ample, oppor- tunity, to retract the libel. and so far had not seen fit to do so. Normally Coast rags do not .print libel actions,; figuring it. only en- courages crackpots tp follow suit. But the Hearst papers thought it was news and gave .it quite a play, even giving Bonelli’s. bopk a plug m the news columns, r Bonelli’s family has lived in Arizona for generations. They came originally from Switzerland, not Italy,.- firm bearing his name, who same up with the idea a year ago. First issue will contain articles by Thurman Arnold (“Personal Liberties Are Indivisible”), Chester Bowles (“Asians Fear Our Foreign Policy”), Philip Wylie (“America-^ The World’s First. Pediarchy”), Herbert Weiqstock (“-What Makes a Conductor Great?”), Richard B. Morris (“The McCarthys of Yes- terday”), Dr! Norman Vincent Peale (“What Really Worries Peo- ple Today?”) and others, Editorial approach. It’s said, “is that of a book published” with the idea of printing articles of “permanent value on important ideas and issues/’ i New Pocket Mags Fresh entries for the pocket-size mag field are being groomed by the Berkley publishing Corp., a newly formed outfit. First tp hit the stands will be News, T5c weekly. Its initial edition is due next Tuesday (26) with an editorial format aimed at'the tabloid reader market. Some two months later will be the debut, of Chic, a 15c monthly described as aimed at the women’s market, Berkley is headed by Fred Klein, former veepee and circulation chief of Avon Publications, and Charles Byrne, also v.p. and editor- in-chief of Avon, Editorial Staff of News is topped by Jack Conway. Long with Cowles Publications, he was with Quick, a pioneer in the pocket-size, mag field, and later managing editor of Tempo. Editor of Chic is Margo Korda, former producer and commentator of fash- ion shows. vertising .Acceptability rad in the Monday (18) editions of the N. Y. Herald Tribune * and, the Washing- ton Post. Paperbacks Up Again?^ Great debate over the state of the paperback industry continues, with a new voice added to the fray, Theodore Pratt, one of the more volumiriously-represehted' of the paperback authors, claims “that despite what others who are behind the times say, the paperback busi- ness is on the rise in sales again, now that the field has settled down.” Pratt reports that his paperback original, “Smash-Up/’ has already sold 80% of its first printing after only a month’s dis- tribution, and that a reissue of “Handsome” appears to be on its way to duplicating the feat.- Pratt is currently in Boca Raton, Fla,, where at the Southern Gov- ernors Conference last week the state of Florida presented each delegate with a copy of Pratt’s Florida novel, “The- Flame Tree,” autographed and presented by the author. Clark’s British Post T. Fife Clark, public relations adviser to the British government,. |s. leaving his Downing St., post td Become director-general of the Central Office of Information. tie succeeds Sir Robert Fraser, wno was recently named director- general of the independent Tele- vision Authority, which will oper- ate Britain’s first commercial tele- vision web. v Pocket Books Into Mag* . Pocket Books Inc.,, one of the Paperback .pioneers, is entering the B?agazine field with the publica- jjjpn Oct. .25 of the first issue of tne Pocket Book Magazine, a a,?.-, rized quarterly . containing articles by w.k, writers in a.variety fields; Editor will be Franklin watts, president of the publishing Columnist Digest .Quick Digest, hew 25c monthly pocketsize mag, is on the stands, with features by top columnists and others in its- first issue (dated December). Contents of about 40 articles include Walter Winchell's “Killers I Have Known,” Earl Wil- son ’s * ‘MMMore About MMMarilyn. ’' Billy Rose’s “The Next Time I See Paris,” Ed Sullivan’s “Tbe Man Who Scared America,” etc. Editor-publisher is Hy Steirman, With Ruth Taylor managing editor. Louis Sobol Encores . Louis Sobol has signed another two-year contract with King Fea- tures and the N. Y. Journal-Amer- ica. •Jt takes him into 1956 and marks 25 years on. the evening sheet as a show biz columnist. Pros Sc Cons, On Gillmor Book Morris L. Ernst panned “Fear, The Accuser”, by Dan Gillmor (Abelard - Sehuman) on Barry Gray’s radio program , (Sept. 25) as “biased/' Arthur Garfield Hays, co-counsel with Ernst on the board of the American Civil Liberties Union, praised the book highly in his review of it in The Nation Oct. 16, Gray called it a “great; new hook.” The N. Y. Times rejected a full-page ad on. the book for Oct. 17 Sunday Book Section, without giving any reason to the publisher or the Waters ton &, Fried agency, which placed the copy.. The ad quoted from the' Hays review. The book is all about Congressional .in- vestigating committees and wit- nesses before them. Author Gillmor began his writ- ing career under the tutelage of the late O. K. Bovard, managing editor of the St. Louis'Post- Dis- patch. He was a pilot in the Army Air Force, in World War II, and is a son of an Admiral in the U. S. Navy. Meanwhile, smaller ads with es- sentially the same text, according to a representative of' the .pub- lisher, as the full-page ad ’rejected by the Times’ Committee on Ad- CHATTER Ted Patrick, editor of Holiday mag, in from Paris Monday. (18) on the Flandre. Irving Kramer, formerly with Look. mag, appointed art director for Popket Magazines. “The Gertrude Lawrence Story,” by. Nancy Spain, being serialized in the Evening News, Glasgow. Michael Clark, foreign corres- pondent of the N. Y, Times*. re- turned to Europe last week on the SS United States. Richard A, Thornburgh ‘pro- moted to executive director and John S. Gilen to managing editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer. Max Winkler, prez of the Long- champs' Restaurants, has. authored “The Longchamps Cookbook,” for November publication, by Harper’s. Bill Smith, an associate editor of Billboard for 11 years, has.resigned to go into personal management. He specialized in vaudeville and nitery coverage, Mort Frankel, tv freelancer -and former CBS editor, makes his na- tional magazine debut Sun. (24) with an article in This . Week on the 50th; anniversary of New York’s subway system. Edward L. Bennays among, four “outstanding” news and public re- lations men awarded certificates of commendation at a recent seminar, held by the School of Journalism of Florida U. Ira Peck named editor of Screenland and Silver Screen mags by publisher Ned Pines. Peck continues in his present post as editor of Pines Publications’ new projects division. Charles Jasper Sisson, Asst. Director and Senior Fellow , of the Shakespeare Institute, Stradford- ori-Avon, has compiled the com- plete. works of William- Shaker peafe for' Harpr publication. Program of foreign- films not regularly sliown to the American, public is being readied by the For- eign Press Assn, of Hollywood. Imports from Japan, South Africa, France, England and Canada will be shown to members and invited guests.. ^ Alfred A. Knopf has added a new book by CBS-TV’s “Omnibus” emcee, Alistair Cooke, “A Com- mencement Address,” to the fall list. It will be published Nov, 8. The address was given to the graduating class of Smith College in June this year, Tom Mahoney, a former editor of Look and Fortune, has authored “The Great Merchants,” for Har- per’s, detailing the success stories of institutions such as R. H. Macy, Filenes, Marshall Field, Sears Roe- buck, A&P, Orbach’s, Neiman-Mar- cus, Breritario’S, Brooks Bros,, Tif- fany’s, F. & R. Lazarus, et al. Collection pf magazine articles being published by Scribner’s this week, “A Guide to Successful Mag- azine Writing,” contains two show business pieces. They are Kate Smith’s story as told to Martin Abramson in the American Maga- zine, and a piece on Strates Car- nival by James Poling, published in the Satevepost. Variety’s oft-quoted headline ■ of Oct. 30, 1929, “Wall Street lays an egg,” leads off John Gray’s article, “The Day A Whole Generation Went Broke” in Mac- lean’s magazine,. Toronto. U. S.- born Gray has just moved to St, John* N.. B;, as'mag’s ‘ Maritimes staff, man. Wife Araby Lockhart, Toronto stage and tv .actress* moved with! him. While fiackihg the proposed $75,- 000,000 Back. Bay Center in Boston for producer-realtor • Roger, .L, Stevens during the past year, press-, agent Bob Viand was himself bit- ten by the real estate bug. He and brother Dick bought a pic- turesque carriage house in nearbyj Cohasset and, converted it into a home. Natch, it’s being called “Barn Yesterday.” Oscar, pystel, president of Ban- tam Books Inc., last week returned to N.Y. from the Coast, where he conferred with studio executives, on pix-book promotion tieips. Fu- ture Bantam tieins will include “The Bridge At Toko-Ri” “East ol' Eden” (Warners), ““Lord Vanity” (20th) and “Man Without A Star” (U). The first three will be pub-, lished by Bantam in January. Special “Pacific” edition of Sat- urday Review has a number of bright pieces, notably Irving Hoff- man’s. “Hongkong—a State of Never Mind,” a closeup of that Oriental crossroads as will never be found in any Baedeker; J. P. McEvoy’s '“I’ll Take Manila”; Leonard Lyons’ “Hawaii—the. Des- sert Islands”;, and James Mich- ener’s' “The Sea of the Talented Traveler.” Hollywood. As soon as the cycle of crooked cop pix runs its full 360 degrees, which should be any century* pow, because Jthe taste of fans tires so easily, I should, think a fruitful field would, be shady sportswriters. Those operating in amateur sports would provide the scripticians with better story material because tlie contrast. between pro-writers, and am-players would provide a ready-made black, and white basis, for conflicts Just before the current football season'began, California professed to be scandalized by a highschool star whose father screamed that, his boy had been the victim of double-dealing lucrative promises not kept, and so on. As a result, he pulled the lad out of one college hungry to increase its Monday morning standings in the AP and UP polls, and enrolled, him in another which could afford, to make good on what it offered because it was already, up at the top. Sports.writers, who generally kept things of this sort under cover, lest exposing them would cut down their quota of free meals or extra passes for important people not above these venial forms of bribery* played the scandal up for a while and then dummied Up. I have had little experience in this stuff, and that in homeopathic dosage* Which proved rather heady, I once ’ :rote a piece for the old Liberty called “Stumblebacks.” The thesis was that you didn’t have to be a halfwit to be a halfback, but if you were a halfback long enough you would be a halfwit. A legman, who Was the fastest typist, fastest runner and fastest conclusion-jumper, filled in part of the. mogaic by .supplying me many, case-histories (himself among them)! of light but. fast backs Whose brai liad been bashed out of shape from hitting 200-pound tackles,' A Stumbleback Stumbles One of the case-histories he supplied me nearly got us into a juicy > libel suit. The ticket was ultimately fixed by having some ghost write a short story and having .the battered brain sign it* thereby proving that the case-history in. question couldn’t possibly have referred to him* I acquiesced to this,' as the cost of proving the point’ by "psy- chiatrists in open court Would have run-to a fancy figure. The only other footnote I could supply to any story dealing with these .'knights of the sports-desk in tarnished armor happened 40 years ago, It was while I was an undergraduate at Columbia. Though .‘Sid Luckman is generally hailed as Columbia’s . first pro-- fessional in the field of football, I’m afraid diligent research would give ’me a priority. Many of my classmates, notably M. Lincoln Schuster,. Howard Dietz, Si Seadler, Merryle Stanley Rukeyser and George E. Sokplsky, have attempted to place on my shoulders the whole responsibility for the return in 1916 of amateur football to. Morningside Heights: But I am confessing to nothing of the sort.- All I am admitting, and riot even that under oath, was that I was the first to make any money out of it. It happened that before I went to Columbia I had worked on The Sun, which in those days rose in the . morning and had quite a standing , in New York journalism. I had arranged that when I wept to the school''''of journalism I should be the campus correspondent for the downtown daily. Sun correspondents were , paid $8 a Column and the secret of success was to get long enough strips to. paste up at the end of the week to make a living but of it. The Greener Faroff Fields I, soon discovered that While correspondents from other • colleges were cleaning up on football in the fall of the year, South Field was practically the Forest Lawn of the East as far as activity was concerned. Other colleges were teeming with activity as soon as the academic year started and very little of it was in classrooms. Yale had built its bowl out of the profits of amateur football. Harvard and Princeton had their stadiums. Indeed,, almost every campus, save Columbia, was making money out of football. . To make any kind, of 1 living I used to cover games out of town as a second-string sportswriter: I got pretty weary of trekking to other colleges and extolling their Skill and courage, and besides, I wasn’t pn a. swindle sheet and travel expenses cut father deeply into that $8 a column; , So I got myself elected class president and began a campaign to restore football to Morningside Heights. The game had been heaved off the campus in 1905 because too many stevedores were enrolling in September and flunking out on the first quizzes in November, after which, if they were still all of one piece, they returned to the docks, “Crystallizing Public Opinion” It was a tough assignment to prove that the university had suffered because it had been without football for 10 years. In fact, all the convincing arguments were on the other side. It Had grown to be the most eminent University in the World without any football at all, with an enrollment around 30,000. But I kept pounding, stimulating mass meetings, quoting my own; fiery remarks: In my own dispatches and otherwise loading the news in a way that is far more common today than it was then. Finally the authorities gave in. They threw limitations around the return of the game, however. No students of professional schools were to be allowed to play. That paid‘off Scully arid'the power, of the press. In fact,, the game was to be limited to Columbia College and only to about 600 students (h that area of learning. We accepted the limitations with good grace, which was a great disappointment to President Nicholas Murray JBut.Ler. He had rather hoped we would kick up a new row at the, brushoff so that he could say, “Very well, in that case you’ll get no football at all.” But. Who Was On First? The first game was ,an iriterclass affair r Charlie Hahn of Halyard * who Was studying at Columbia Law, coached orie, group, and Arthur Howe, an all-American .quarterback from Yale* who was studying at Union Theological, coached the other. The game resulted in a score- less tie. There were no * fights, no injuries, np trouble of any sort.: That opened the. Way for intercollegiate football. A couple of pro- hibitionists'were imported from Oberliri to coach the team! T.oi Thorp; Columbia's last All-Am erican before; the game was abolished and after that a sportswriter for the HearSt papers, helped out. Sq ; did; Ham Fish, Harvard’s All-American isolationist. Five games were played that season arid Columbia won them all. The last was with New York U. and it’was a humdinger. The final score, as I remember it, was 19 to 16. When the, season, ended, I tallied up my take and discovered I had made $485 more than I had., made ail the previous year and thus i ad become .Columbia’s first pro since the days when longshoremen came uptown, played but the bone-crushing Season and then returned to the easier work of loading arid unloading steamships. The Chaise Lounge Sportswriter This increase of nearly $500 bucks, remember, was clear profit. 'There were no taxes, nb expenses, save a 5c Subway ride, and miieh of the work could be done frorri my dormitory window without everi going on the field at all. It was, it is true, only money and I didn’t exactly steal it. All I did was to encourage others to work like dogs .on a gridiron for nothirig so that I might make a nice living out of exploiting their willingness to die for dear old Columbia. * ’ If riiy motive were only a little higher I’d feel better about the. whole thing. To those who feel that the effort to restore football to Columbia was certainly worth it, I shrug my shoulders arid shamefully agree. It,was for me; at any rate.