Variety (January 1961)

24 PICTURES Fiftyfifth P^ASSIETlT Anniversary January 4T 1961 THE COPY-HOOK The Whyfor of a Cherished Possession, H.L. Mencken’s Symbol of His Youth H. Allen Smith The substitute cleaning woman tried to throw it a way today. This Is the second time it has happened. Our regular cleaning woman was halfway to the garbage can with it when I caught her and snatched it out of her hands. It is the only keep*ake, or me¬ mento. that I own and it is probably my most cherished possession; yet everybody who tees it in my office says, “Why in the world do you keep that old thing around here?” It probably cost, originally, 10c or maybe as much as 15c. It is a gnarled, fire-scarred, twisted bit of metal called by some a “copy-spike” but known to its” former owner, Henry L. Mencken, as his “copy hook.*’ Any newspaper city ioom contains a forest of such copy-hooks. This one was the first item released by the Mencken estate following his death in 1956. 1 inherited it. It may be an ugly, misshapen thing, but for me it has a fasci¬ nating history and a sentimental significance. I knew Henry Men¬ cken for 30 years and he >vas al¬ ways a hero to me, and always kind to me. even when I was a dirtycbirt reporter with a residue of moisture behind my ears. I knew about his copy-hook, which stood on top of a bookcase in Mencken's workroom at the famous Baltimore address. 1524 Hollins Street, where he lived all but the first three jears of his life and where he died in his sleep. I knew the story cf that copy-hook and the reason he kept it always in view when he was working. It was an important sym¬ bol to him. Its stcy goes back to a February morning in 1904 when Henry Men¬ cken. at the age of 24, was city editor of the Baltimore Herald. On that historic morning the great¬ est fire in the city’s history swept downtown Baltimore and"before it had burned itself out, it had de Year Ahead Okay For Germany By HAZEL WILD Frankfurt. Leo Huchstetter, head of Mol ion Picture Export Assn. in Germany, until his very recent shift to suc¬ ceed frank Geivasi as Rome bo<=s cf the MPEA. foresaw few clouds for the American film-maker*; in "West Germany for the next \ear. "We're an industry 'that is going to --unive thn-ueh better pictures — that's a (ihhe. but it wouldn't he said so often if ;t were without i( urination.” As for iflfSO. ;t proved all tiie asters wrong :n West Ger¬ many, Ho? hstetter noted. "1959 was what trie tourists call a good summer and mo\ie men <-ay a had summer, with extreme heat. And I HHt was jm-? the reverse." he said. The long tainy summer kept peo¬ ple dose to the movie houses. Although the iinal I960 statistics are not yet available. Hochste-tter noted that the ?%IPEA member com¬ panies are roughly maintaining t lie Jtame business Jewel in the German market, and will maintain its in¬ come of the previous year. Grosses in Germany for the caltndar year 1960 will thus be abowt 85.CG0.0G0 German marks about $21,000,000'' he predicted, and the pattern remains pretty steady in that the MPEA-ers continue to bold about 30Ci> of tbe German market, with an especially big ap¬ peal in the urban centres. By H. ALLEN SMITH stroyed a square mile of the busi¬ ness district. Mencken and his staff, forced to evacuate their own building, went to Washington and used the facili¬ ties of the Post to get out a fourpage paper; then they traveled to Philadelphia, 100 miles from Balti¬ more, and put together the Herald in the plant of the Evening Tele¬ graph for the next five weeks. “It was brain-fagging and back¬ breaking,” Mencken wrote years afterward, “but it was grand be¬ yond compare — an adventure of the first chop, a razzle-dazzle superb and elegant, a circus in 40 rings.” In the month following the fire the young city editor, destined to become one of America’s greatest literary stylists and the nation's most flamboyantly acerb . critics, made his way back to the black¬ ened and gutted Herald building. Its frame was intact and Mencken managed to shinny up to the fifth floor where the city room had been. “It was easy to find the place where my desk had stood,” he recalled, “though the desk itself was only a heap of white dust, for its hardware survived and so did the frame of the gooseneck-light that had stood upon it. I also found my old copy-hook, twisted as if it had died in agony. . . .’’ A Memo From Mencken He described his adventures dur¬ ing the great fire, and his return to the Herald city room, in one of his autobiographical books. “News¬ paper Days.” published just 20 years ago. Shortly after that I wrote to him and hinted that I would greatly enjoy having that copy-hook some day. Promptly came his reply: That copy-hook trill become ! yours the day I am Translated ! to bliss eternal. I hai'e left ? orders that my carcass is to . be stuffed and deposited in i the National Museum at Washi ington. I had planned to ask ■ the taxidermist to put the copy-hook in my hand , but that I request is now canceled and I you will get it in due course . i When he died five years ago I .was so upset that a month parsed [before I remembered the bequest. ;I wrote to his brother. August, w ho ! is a carbon copy of Henry in 1 physical appearance and caustic .manner of speech, and told him ‘about the copvliook. Back came a letter from August, telling me that the executors of Henry’s estate, the Mercantile Safe Deposit & Trust Co., had instructed [him to let nothing go however small — that it would take about a year and a half to wind up the estate. August suggested, howe\er, • that if I would send along Henry’s letter, tbe Mercantile Safe Deposit & Trust Co. might unbend a bit. [And so I did. Thus it came about I that a solemn mandamus was ! issued by the Mercantile Safe De; posit & Triist Co. releasing into ' my custody and ownership, one : crippled and fire-scarred copy‘ hook, relic of the Baltimore fire of i 1904. I August Mencken now had ; trouble finding it. After about a I week he wrote to me that he had I located, in Henry's workroom, “a ! paper spike w^hich is made up of a wire spike fixed to a small cast iron base and which looks as if it ; had been through much worse ■ things than the Baltimore fire.” I He wondered if this could be my i inheritance. By return mail I in; formed him that it w*as and he, an ■ amateur cabinetmaker, constructed f a neat little crate to hold it and : shipped it off to me. [ It stands today on a shelf in my office, not far from a panel con¬ taining two photographs of its former owner — a Pinchot portrait he gave me off his parlor piano in 1935. and tbe last photograph ; taken of him before his death, sitting beside his famous woodpile in the backyard of the Hollins Street home. i There remains only the need to : outline the svmbolism of the copy¬ book. A fewr months after his death the CBS Radio Workshop did a fine half-hour program, written by Allen E. Sloane. dramatizing the I fabulous career of Henry Mencken ! — the copy-hook serving as a device . through which the old and dying Mencken remembered the glorious tim^ of his youth. Standing there in his workroom where he turned out such prodigioas quantities of Oambang. iconoclastic prose for so many years, it reminded him of “how* full of steam and malicious . animal magnetism I was when I was young.” ' But more to the point, the copy¬ book was emblematic of a transi¬ tion that came to him with the Baltimore fire; it was a sort of badge representing the time when he readied maturity. He said that he had gone into the disaster a boy. "and it was the hot gas of youth that kept me going.” When he c-ame out of it at last. “I was a settled and indeed almost a middle-aged man, spavined by re¬ sponsibility and aching in every sinew.” For several years I spiked no single piece of paper on that copy¬ book. But now it carries a piece of white cardboard on which is printed this warning: . DON'T THROW THIS OUT! j It will stay with me as long as 'I live. The Litmus Paper Man ; Continued from pace 12 ; what like a test pilot. He pats the chair tnen ea>< s down into it, s< and nods uppr< eb t.'y. SMITH Nice fit. Comfortable back. A little pir.chy in the bottom, but it diould v(H patty v. til in the upper middle class Income groups purchasing on the installment plan. POTTS Smith, you're not here to test chairs. SMITH Oh. good. I\e hated furniture n-M-aroh eversince an accident I had with a r.emolic bridge table. CARBON We want \ou to lest a new movie. Smith. You are an average moviegoer, aren't \ou? SMITH Oh. I'm tli a\err.ge m< \ icgi er. I see :1m e-point-six movies a month. POTTS Three -point -six? SMITH • Yes. sir. Throe in hard fop theate rs and *d\-f( i:ths of one in a drivc-in. That cii i\ e— in figure m average for a middle-aged man, you know*. CARBON Who are \our favorite movie stars? SMITH Male. Rook Hudson. Female. Doris Dav. POTTS That checks out with Photoplav. SMITH Eae*h moviegoing month. I consume two and a half hags of popcorn, one of them buttered, one of tnem oleo-d, tbe haif dry. POTTS ! That checks out wilh the Skouras figures. SMITH In the drive-in, I eat three-filths of a pizza. CARBON Three-filths? SMITH Tbe other twe fifths I break into email pieces to mark a trail back) to my car from the restroom. POTTS What kind of car do you drive? SMITH A compact Ford. POTTS Oh, a Falcon? SMITH No — a Fairlane. I had an accident. A Volkswagen got into my trunk and rammed me into a fat lady. POTTS Well. Smith, there’s no doubt you’re an average moviegoer, so wt want to get your reactions to this production. SMITH fshruas) Anything Mr. Sindlinger wants me to do — that’s what I get paid for. POTTS Yes. Sam — give Mr. Smith the titles first, see which one he responds to. CARBON We’ve got several titles, Mr. Smith — and we want you to decide which one we’ll use. “The Cowboy and The Sexpot” . . . “The Sexpot and The Cow puncher” . . . “The Sexpuncher and the Cow-pot” . . . “The Potboy and The Sexcow” ... or “Sink The Bismarck.” POTTS Which one of those tweaks you? SMITH Well — as a family man — I’d like to see something with "sex” in the title, but I wouldn’t let my children go. If you don’t mind a suggestion — POTTS Certainly, certainly — that’s why you’re here. SMITH Well — a good, wholesome title that would appeal to me and my children, I think, would be — ah — POTTS (to Carbon ) Write this down. SMITH Ahh . . . mnim . . . Yeah! “Punch My Cow, Boy, And I'll Sink Your Bismarck!” Potts and Carbon look at each other and nod agreement. Carbon writes it down. POTTS It’s different. Now tell him the story, Sam. * SAM Yes. Now*. Mr. Smith — our three leads are played by Rock Hudson, Dorig^Day and Gregory Peck. ^ SMITH You don’t need Peck. POTTS No Peck. Make a note. Call MCA. Go ahead, Sam. CARBON Okay, Rock plays both male parts then. He’s a cowboy at the turn of the century, and he drifts down to Mexico to find the man who killed his father. When he gets there, he meets Doris. She's a dancer in a cantina and they fall in love, even though her boss wants to marry her. She's afraid of her bo«-*s and tells Rock to take. her away, so he does. The boss follows them and shoots it out with Rock. The boss gets killed and Doris and Rock go back to the little Mexican town — Bismark — and take over the cantina. And they find out the boss has been the front for a dope line smuggling heroin to high school kids in San Diego. They wrestle with their conscience — and in a powerful scene decide they can't let a good thing go, so they take over the dope smuggling themselves. That's when Rock’s father shows up— he was just pretending to be dead to see what his son would do— only now he’s a Government agent, so he arrests his own son. Doris shoots him dead and turns herself in so she can spend the rest of her life with Rock in jail. See? It’s a slice of life. Smith thinks about the story as they wait for his answer . POTTS > dnallu) Well, Mr. Smith—? SMITH I like it. POTTS & CARBON ' to each other; Jit i He likes It! SMITH Just a suggestion ... POTTS By all means! Get tin's down. Sam. Yes. Mr. Smith? SMITH I’m just an average movie goer, you understand . . . POTTS That’s why you’re here, Smi’ty . . . SMITH Well. I’ve seen enough shooting and dope smuggling and like that, so I’d make Rock a prizefighter who likes to paint and he meets this pretty schoolteacher, Doris, in the museum one day and they fall In love and get married and go to Mexico and get in a fiesta and dance and sing and he pair.ts her picture and. Rock’s father is an oil millionaire who uses the picture on all his calendars from the oil company arid she gets to he a famous calendar girl and Rock goes to Paris to paint and forget her. only he can’t, so she comes to Paris and they, visit Spain and get in a fiesta and dance and sing. Now that’s a picture I’d go see. POTTS SMITH CARBON SMITH . remember. Multiply me by 175 million 1! a certain success. POTTS CARBON You’d go see that? I’d take my whole family. You’re sure. Smith? Positive — and I’m average moviegoers, you've got \oui-m You can't fight science. No. we can't fivht science. POTTS That’s the picture we’ll make Thank you, Mr. Smith, and what do we owe \nu? SMITH Oh. Air. Sindlinger will send \ou his bill. I just work on salary. POTTS Well, I’d like to give you a little something extra — SMITH No. no — I’ve enjoyed this. 1 hanks. First location job I've had In four years. CARBON Location job? SMITH You know, like when you travel. For four years now. I’ve been stuck in the office in St. Louis, guinea-pigging canned peas . . . soft candies . . . neckwear . . , surgical dressings and like that. I've enjoved getting away again. V POTTS When was the last time vou got away? SMITH Four years ago — when I was sent up to Detroit. I did the guinea* piggin’ that put the Edsel on the market! BLACKOUT