The Charlotte News
Thursday, January 22, 1959
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Havana that with the shouted support of more than half a million Cubans, Fidel Castro continued his campaign this date to justify to the world the execution of the henchmen of deposed and fled dictator Fulgencio Batista. Sr. Castro was scheduled to appear before hundreds of foreign newsmen at a press conference this date. Later in the day, Havana's first showcase trial of supporters of Sr. Batista, charged with murder and atrocities, would begin, with the first defendants to be three officers in the dictator's former Army, scheduled to take place in the 17,000-seat Sports Palace built by El Presidente Batista. Nearly 1,000 observers wearing the colorful clothes of their rural areas were in town for the trials. American newsmen wanted to ask Sr. Castro at the press conference about his statement to the throng the previous day that "Cuba will ask a revision and nullification of onerous concessions given foreign enterprises by the Government of Batista." Sr. Castro had singled out only the Cuban Telephone Co., part of the estimated billion-dollar American investment in Cuba. The AT&T affiliate had received permission from El Presidente Batista to raise rates two years earlier to justify expansion investments. Sr. Castro stated that telephone rates would be lowered. The rally in front of the presidential palace had attracted a large part of Havana's 1.2 million residents, plus many more from outlying provinces of the island, with a total population of 6.4 million. Sr. Castro referred to the masses as numbering a million, while unofficial observers guessed that they numbered between 500,00 and 750,000, jamming the park in front of the palace and streets for blocks on each side of it. Whatever the number had been, there was no question of admiring support for the 32-year old lawyer and guerrilla leader, Sr. Castro. His hoarse voice had been drowned out by the cheers at the end of almost every sentence of his 85-minute speech.
The Associated Press reports that the winter's worst storms had eased off this date, but that intense cold added to the suffering and shivering misery of millions of Americans. Thousands had been rendered homeless in flooded areas of Ohio, Kentucky, Pennsylvania and Indiana. Forty-nine deaths had been reported in the territory hit by heavy snow, ice storms, slashing rains or tornadic winds, a territory which extended from the Southwest to the Atlantic Seaboard. Arctic air had spread south and east, increasing the misery of residents of the storm zones, but had checked the runoff of waters from flooded streams. Flood damage had run into many millions of dollars. The bitter cold checked Ohio's worst flood in 25 years. Thousands of evacuees had begun returning to their homes, but thousands of others remained in schools and other emergency shelters. The crisis was past in Mount Vernon, a city of 16,000 population which experienced the inundation of central Ohio communities, and floodwaters had begun to recede in other areas. The cold air mass moving in from the west also had been a break in the flooded areas of New York state. Hundreds of families had been forced from their homes in the Buffalo area on Wednesday night and this date. States of emergency had been declared in Salamanca and Lackawanna. In South Buffalo, an ice jam in Cazenovia Creek had broken and sent a five-foot wall of water through residential streets, injuring several persons. The swirling Hoosac River had undermined the supports of two bridges in North Adams, Mass., causing them to tilt at dangerous angles. Rivers and creeks gushed out of their beds in many parts of western Pennsylvania, forcing hundreds to flee their homes. The Allegheny River had been the most troublesome in Pennsylvania, and the worst situations had been north of Pittsburgh. Martial law had been declared in Madison, Ind., where 100 families had been forced from their homes by overflows from the Ohio River. Disaster plans had been put into effect and National Guard troops had joined civilian workers in some of the inundated areas. Small streams in the Wheeling, W. Va., area were out of their banks. Hail the size of baseballs had shattered school and church windows and damaged automobiles in Hartselle, Ala. Skies had cleared in the Midwest in the wake of snows which had reduced traffic to a crawl and sleet which had snapped power and communication lines and cut off many communities from the rest of the world. The snowstorm which had swept out of the Great Plains and dumped up to a foot of snow across the nation's mid-section had curtailed the normal activities in hundreds of communities.
Note to the crazy bitch who heads
ICE: You had better start doing your real job of administering
emergency aid for the current cold weather and snow for the Eastern
half of the nation and cease covering up with lies for your
ill-trained goon squads, the STAPO agents, serving Herr Hitler. You
are liable to wind up in prison for your lack of ability to
understand how this nation's Constitution and its laws actually work,
relying on Herr Hitler's and Herr Doktor Goebbels's interpretations,
both of whom are as stupid as fenceposts. You do not have authority
to send your masked goons into houses without a judicial warrant, for
starters. You are an ignorant fool, obviously without the sense God
gave a goose. Your goose
In Charlotte and the Piedmont this date, a cold wave, with a predicted low of 14, had slowly begun gripping the area this date on the heels of a wind and rain storm which had knocked down trees and power lines. Winds up to 48 mph accompanied the year's first thunderstorm in Charlotte, bringing .86 of an inch of rain. Part of the giant storm moving across the country, the heavy winds and rainfall caused some minor flooding in low-lying sections of Charlotte. A high of 35 was predicted for this date as the sun shone brightly, clear, but the following day's expected high would be down to 30 degrees. Asheville Airport had been closed during the storm and winds were reported to gust up to 100 mph at Mount Mitchell. The storm had brought cold weather back to the mountains, with Asheville reporting 24 degrees early in the morning. There were no reports of snow, although snow flurries were expected this date in some western parts of the state. Mount Mitchell had reported a low of seven degrees during the night, with some icing, and winds early in the morning were between 30 and 35 mph. The weather station there had recorded 1.58 inches of rain from the previous day's and night's storm.
In San Fernando, Calif., it was reported that actor Carl Switzer, 33, who had played Alfalfa in the "Our Gang" and "Reg'lar Fellers" comedies when he had been a boy, had been shot to death on Wednesday night, police indicating that the shooting had occurred during an argument with another man regarding money. He had been a favorite of moviegoers a generation earlier when he appeared in the popular comedies and had become known again with reissuance of the films to television under the title "The Little Rascals". In recent years, however, his movie parts had been minor, and he had worked as a bartender and hunting guide when not acting. He realized nothing from the reissuance of the old films. Police said that Mr. Switzer had gone to the home of a friend on Wednesday night in an effort to collect a $50 loan. Two detectives said that the other man told them that an argument had developed and Mr. Switzer had hit him on the head with a clock, whereupon the man got a gun and it fired harmlessly while they struggled, at which point Mr. Switzer had drawn a knife and the man had shot him in the abdomen, claiming it as self-defense. The shooting had been witnessed by a 37-year old man who had accompanied Mr. Switzer to the other man's home, and by a woman and her three children who were there when the two men arrived. The man who had shot Mr. Switzer was booked on suspicion of murder. Mr. Switzer had begun his movie career in 1933, as he and his young colleagues pranced through a long series of "Our Gang" comedies and then, as they had grown older, appeared in the "Reg'lar Fellers" series. Some of Mr. Switzer's movies in those days were "Too Many Parents", "Wild and Woolly", and "Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch". But after 1942, his career had gone into eclipse, along with those of most of the other child actors who had appeared in the comedies with him. Jackie Cooper had been one member of the gang who had gone on to success as an actor. (Robert Blake would be another, though at present still laboring in small parts and television roles, and so not so well-known as he later would become after his appearance in "In Cold Blood" in 1967.) Mr. Switzer had continued to act, but the parts had been sparse. Among his more recent appearances had been in "Going My Way" in 1944, "State of the Union", "Island in the Sky", "The High and the Mighty", "Dig that Uranium", and "The Defiant Ones", the latter in 1958. Just a year earlier, Mr. Switzer had been slightly wounded in a mysterious shooting near his home when a sniper had winged him in the arm, the police never having found out who the sniper had been. Mr. Switzer had been divorced in 1954. After learning of his death, one of his fellow child stars, George (Spanky) McFarland, said that he was "shocked to say the least." Mr. McFarland, who now had a television show in Tulsa, said that he and Mr. Switzer had been close boyhood friends but had only infrequent contact in recent years.
In Lincolnton, N.C., it was reported that an optometrist of the town had been named chairman of the Lincoln County Heart Committee, the appointment having been made by John Manning of Chapel Hill, president of the North Carolina Heart Association.
Formation of a Charlotte Downtown Association, designed to strengthen the future welfare of the city's central business area, would take place on Thursday morning, February 5, at an organizational meeting in the Carolina Theater.
Lamar Stringfield, 61, former
conductor of the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra, had died in an
Asheville hospital the previous night. He had entered the hospital
for treatment of a severe cold and cause of death had been listed as lung congestion. He had a long and distinguished career in the
field of music as a composer and performer and was North Carolina's
only winner of the Pulitzer Prize for music. He had been known as a
master of the flute, for which he had written many compositions. For
more than 40 years, he had started each day with early morning
practice on his difficult instrument, but had given up playing it
steadily when he left the New York Chamber Music Society in 1927 for
conducting and composing and other musical tasks, which included
assisting at Radio City Music Hall. Although he had been born near
Raleigh, western North Carolina had claimed him as a resident for
most of his life. Mr. Stringfield had said that many of his tunes
were inspired by the mountains near Mars Hill and Burnsville. The
very tunes that he had written into symphonies and opera scores had
first been picked out by him on his banjo. He served his
apprenticeship both in North Carolina and New York organizations, but
rose to the front ranks with such organizations as the Russian
Symphony, the New York Philharmonic, the New York Chamber Music
Society and with the trio which bore his name. He left more than 150
compositions to music lovers of the world. One of those, "From
the Southern Mountains", a suite
News sportswriter Max
Muhleman had won both top prizes in the 1958 writing competition of
the Carolinas Motorsport Writers Association for his account of the
previous February's Daytona Beach Grand National Stock Car Race,
titled "The Grand Old Strand Makes Its Exit", adjudged best
in the spot news
In Portland, Ore., it was reported that parts of the state were plagued by an invasion of starlings. A man whose Portland holly orchard had been ruined by them, said that the birds literally blotted out the sun. He said that their droppings fell like torrential rain on his greenhouse and on unwary pedestrians for half a block around it. Knowing residents, he said, parked their cars elsewhere.
In San Jose, Calif., it was reported that a 107-year old man, who had boasted that he had never before been sick a day in his life, had died on Wednesday of a heart ailment and pneumonia. He had been born in Mexico in 1851 and had come to the U.S. in 1916. Only six years earlier, he had fallen from a tree which he was pruning and had broken a wrist.
In Okemah, Okla., it was reported that a Government experiment might cost $210 additional because of what it did to a curious cow. A farmer had sent a bill for that amount to Weather Bureau officials, who in turn had forwarded the message of the cow's death to Washington. Whethermen had sent a balloon to the earth's outer atmosphere and it had burst and then settled back to earth in a pasture occupied by Bessie, a three-year old polled Hereford. She had munched on the equipment and, despite efforts of a veterinarian, had died.
On the editorial page, "Self-Righteousness Carried to Extremes" indicates that while the state's approach to racial desegregation was generally sound, some North Carolina officials had been carrying public piety above and beyond the call of duty. The 1956 Pupil Assignment Act had served the state well and, as long as it was wisely and honorably applied, would undoubtedly be allowed to stand by the Federal judiciary. But if the week's Federal court decision in the Virginia case regarding its laws attempting to circumvent Brown v. Board of Education, had been any guide, an as yet unused and ill-advised portion of the 1956 Pearsall Plan legislation in North Carolina was in peril, that provision permitting a board of education of any administrative unit to "suspend the operation of one or more of the public schools under its jurisdiction" after a vote by the people. That feature was known as the "local option" and was to be employed only in "intolerable situations", although the latter phrase did not appear in the law. It had been that threat to the State Constitutional principle of "a general and uniform system of public schools" which had prompted the newspaper's opposition to the Pearsall Plan package when it had been presented to the General Assembly in a special session called by the Governor in 1956.
The ruling by the special three-judge Federal District Court in Norfolk on January 19 had been aimed specifically at Virginia's "massive resistance" school closure law, but it counsels noting carefully the decision's language: "… We are at the inescapable conclusion that the Commonwealth of Virginia, having accepted and assumed the responsibility of maintaining and operating public schools, cannot act through one of its officers to close one or more public schools in the state solely by reason of the assignment to, or enrollment in, that public school of children of different races or colors, and, at the same time keep other public schools throughout the state open on a segregated basis. The 'equal protection' afforded to all persons and taxpayers is lacking in such a situation."
It finds that the judges had not suggested that the state had to maintain a public school system but that "the closing of a public school or grade therein, for the reasons heretofore assigned, violates the right of a citizen to equal protection of the laws and, as to any children willing to attend the school with a member or members of the opposite race, such a school-closing is a deprivation of due process of law."
It finds that the Federal court had outlined a circumstance which appeared to parallel closely a situation which could arise in North Carolina under the "local option" part of the Pearsall Plan. The court had said: "In the event the State of Virginia withdraws from the business of educating its children, and the local governing bodies assume this responsibility, the same principles with respect to equal protection of law would be controlling to that particular county or city. While the county or city, directly or indirectly, maintains and operates a school system with the use of public funds or participates by arrangement or otherwise in the management of such school system, no one public school or grade in the county or city may be closed to avoid the effect of the law of the land while other public schools or grades remain open at the expense of the taxpayers. Such schemes or devices looking to the cut-off of funds for schools or grades affected by the mixing of races, or the closing or elimination of specific grades in such schools, are evasive tactics which have no standing under the law."
It indicates that if the opinion stood on appeal—assured to be the case based on the Little Rock decision in Cooper v. Aaron, decided by the Supreme Court on September 12—, it was doubtful that one or more schools could be closed under the Pearsall Plan, while others in the same district remained open at taxpayer expense. It counsels that it ought give pause to a school board in the state with any idea of using that harsh and unusual method of evading the requirements of Federal law, that the warning was clear and it ought be heeded.
"The Man-in-Motion Has Sticky Fingers" indicates that Senator Lyndon Johnson might be czar of the Senate, but one did not become a czar without a weather eye for the auspicious moment. Another auspicious moment had come on Tuesday, disarming everyone, and Senator Johnson had seized it to introduce a civil rights bill.
The jolt which had made it a headline move had not derived so much from the nature of the bill as from the instinct for drama which disarmed Senator Johnson's tactical foes in repeated encounters. His proposal for a Federal "community relations service", similar to the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service vis-à-vis labor disputes, bore the stamp of originality. But even the projected right of subpoena for the Attorney General to obtain voting records, presently being touted as surprising, was not really so surprising as it might seem. Rather it finds it a logical, even conservative, outgrowth of the Alabama experience of the Federal Civil Rights Commission. When electoral officials in Alabama had refused to provide their records, their defiance had drawn stringent criticism from the moderate Southern press, even in some cases, from its fire-eating wing. On the point of "hate" bombings, North Carolina's Senator Sam J. Ervin, collaborating with Senator John F. Kennedy, had already beaten Senator Johnson to the draw. "In fact, Lyndon's fingers seem to be right sticky."
It questions why Senator Johnson's latest play should jolt everyone. "Like the sound of the falling tree in an empty forest, the big noise is mostly in the ear of the listener. If the languor of Washington were not so oppressive, if presidential leadership were not so atrophied, the maneuvers of one senator would not draw such unreserved notice. But the land hungers for political adventure, the big noise, the voice in the wilderness. It has fallen to a talented parliamentarian from Texas with an astute sense of timing to satisfy that hunger."
It finds that there was no doubt that one of Senator Johnson's secrets to success was that he held the rare position of the activist and the middle-of-the-road man all at once. He had become an activist because no one else had much of a move about him and he commanded the middle because he coasted right between the intransigent Southern group and the militant group led by Senator Paul Douglas of Illinois.
It finds that again Senator Johnson had earned a hurrah or two; "but for all we know is sprinting hard in the direction of a presidential nomination, watching with eagle eyes for every idea he can use. It's his privilege; but he will need to be watched for sticky fingers."
"He Showed America an Escape Route" begins with a verse by A. P. Herbert: "I wish I hadn't broken that dish,/ I wish I was a movie star,/ I wish a lot of things, I wish/ That life was like the movies are." It indicates that life was never like the movies of Cecil B. DeMille, which had been their principal charm. "They were all colossal, stupendous, gigantic! Corn? Of course it was corn—but corn with a million-volt glitter and a cast of thousands."
It finds that there had always been more artifice than art in Mr. DeMille's creations. The humor had been gargantuan and the sex as unsubtle as a kick in the pants. Critics were appalled but the public loved it. They wanted to be entertained, to "escape", and Mr. DeMille had provided the gaudiest escape route which Hollywood had ever previously seen or would likely see again. No actor had ever performed his role better on the set that Mr. DeMille. "Just off-camera, he always put on the greatest show in show business."
An awestruck reporter in 1955 had said of him: "A retinue of 11 follows him wherever he goes. He is attended by an associate producer, a personal female aide, a couple of press-agents, a dialogue director, two script girls, a secretary, an assistant director, a mike boy to thrust a microphone before his mouth whenever he feels like thinking out loud, and a chair boy to slip a chair under him whenever he feels (in the matter of Queen Victoria) in the mood for sitting."
North Carolina had claimed him, but he belonged, heart and soul, to a hundred million popcorn eaters who wished that "life was like the movies are."
"No. There'll never be another DeMille—and that's why a lot of theaters will call it an era and shut down."
A piece from the Greensboro Daily News, titled "Metropolis or Rural Village?" indicates that a choice, nostalgic item had been disseminated by the Associated Press under a Charlotte dateline recently, indicating that reported to the police as stolen from a Charlotte resident overnight had been "hog feet, hog ears, pork chops, sausage and, by some unexplained anachronism, instant coffee."
It suggests therefore that the small structures behind some of the residences seen in Charlotte's outskirts were smoke houses. It says it had not noted any pigpens, although presumably as tolerable as the notoriously odorous Sugar Creek. "But how memories of a country boy are jogged. Oh, to be in Charlotte during hog-killing time!"
Drew Pearson indicates that Soviet Deputy Premier Anastas Mikoyan had now returned to Moscow, departing with the Administration just as firmly entrenched against any change in economic aloofness toward Russia and also with the Berlin policy unchanged. The fact that talks had been held and gotten nowhere probably added to the official tension of the Cold War. A showdown had to come sooner or later regarding Berlin and as the Deputy Premier had warned shortly before he had returned home, it could mean a hot war. In that respect, his visit had heightened rather than diminished American-Soviet tension.
But the fact that he had toured the U.S., risking injury from hostile Hungarian refugees, and facing the piercing, sometimes brutal questioning of the American press, presumably in the interest of peace, unquestionably had made an impression on the American public, an impression indicating that Russia wanted better relations with the U.S. That in which the diplomatic corps was interested was whether American public opinion had been molded enough to thaw State Department frigidity later.
Significantly, Mr. Mikoyan had made
a better impression on big business than on labor. It had been big
businessmen, most of whom were strong supporters of the President,
who had advised the latter to reverse his policy and get together
with the Deputy Premier. Lunching with automobile moguls in Detroit,
Mr. Mikoyan had remarked to Henry Ford II that while the clouds hung
over most of Detroit, the sun had shown over the Ford plant and he
congratulated Ford for arranging it. Mr. Ford had replied: "After
your sun rocket, I thought the sun was a Russian province." (Mr. Pearson does not take into account the possibility that Mr. Mikoyan may have been angling for one of Ford's 1959 Sunliners
Mr. Pearson notes that it was partly pressure from American business which had brought the recognition of Soviet Russia early during the Roosevelt Administration, in 1933, a long report having urged recognition, signed by James Mooney of General Motors, Thomas Lamont of J. P. Morgan, J. H. Rand, Jr., of Remington-Rand, George Houston of Baldwin Locomotive, and Thomas Morgan of Curtiss-Wright. Spokesmen for Standard Oil, DuPont, International Harvester, General Electric, RCA, Sperry Gyroscope, Chase National Bank and Equitable Trust had also called for recognition of Russia. In those days, Henry Ford I had aroused the wrath of isolationist Father Coughlin by inviting Russian engineers to come to his plant to study mass-production methods.
American labor leaders had by and large given the Soviet Deputy Premier a rougher time than had American business. AFL-CIO president George Meany had declined a luncheon given by James Carey, head of the International Union of Electrical Workers, Walter Reuther, president of the UAW, Joseph Bierne, head of the Communications Workers, William Doherty, head of the Letter Carriers, and Karl Feller of the Brewery Workers. The luncheon had resulted in a friendly debate, during which, for the first time in history, Americans representing a large segment of labor had threshed out international problems with a man representing all of Russian labor. Mr. Mikoyan had made certain significant statements, that the U.S. standard of living was superior to that of Russia, that Russia would welcome more visits by American labor leaders and would give them permission to travel freely, and that Russian leaders could not understand why American labor was so much more critical of Communism than were American capitalists.
Walter Lippmann indicates that Anthony Nutting, writing from London regarding the U.S. visit of Mr. Mikoyan, had demonstrated how hard it was for even the friendliest nations to understand one another, Mr. Nutting having reported that it was being "seriously debated" in London whether the U.S. was moving toward "a two-power deal" with the Soviet Union. After a long report on how much U.S. motives were suspected in Europe, he had proceeded to lecture the U.S. on what it must do to make its European friends feel better about it. But it was precisely what the U.S. had already been doing daily, namely, to make "a full and reassuring report" to all of its NATO partners and to discuss and agree with them "on future policies and procedures". A failure to do those things which it was already doing, according to Mr. Nutting, "would be playing Russia's game beyond the point of safety."
Mr. Lippmann suggests that if that was the kind of uninformed suspicion which existed in London, it was enough to make anyone despair of the effectiveness of a free press. There were two allies, the U.S. and Britain, both speaking the same language, both enjoying free institutions, both able to print and to read whatever they chose, both committed to the same international ideals, and yet a writer with connections in official quarters in London suspected the U.S. of being so foolish and disloyal that it was contemplating a bilateral deal at the expense of Europe.
Mr. Lippmann did not expect the U.S.
to be understood or trusted by Moscow, but it had earned the right to
be trusted by its closest allies, as it did not betray its friends
and the suspicion that the U.S. was so gullible that Mr. Mikoyan
could "sell" the U.S. into betraying its friends was an
affront to the honor of America and an insult to its intelligence.
The public part of the Deputy Premier's visit seemed to be to show
that between the Communist world and the West, there could, on the
great issues, be little free and open communication, as they lived in
different worlds and saw things with different eyes, the U.S. judging
the Soviets with very different minds. The best the U.S. could do was
to negotiate cautiously more or less at arm's length, but the type of
full understanding needed for political cooperation was a very long
way off and it was thus absurd to invite Mr. Mikoyan to subject
himself to a public exhibition like "Meet the Press"
He indicates that those who had studied carefully the problem of communication between the Soviet Union and the West knew that the communication could not be general but had to be specialized. The mathematicians and physical scientists could communicate with one another, as could the engineers or agriculturalists, as could artists and experienced and sophisticated statesmen. So could ordinary tourists meeting ordinary people. But Mr. Mikoyan could not talk to the American people en masse nor could Vice-President Nixon talk, even if he had the freedom of the Soviet radio, to the Russian people en masse.
Regarding the results of Mr. Mikoyan's tour, they could not be measured by the crowds, in the headlines or by the curiosity of the people who had seen him or by their courtesy. The results of the visit would be tested based on whether or not there was movement toward negotiation on the whole German question, for surely that had been the actual objective of the visit, as it was the objective of the Soviet gambit in Berlin.
His purpose could not have been to enter a popularity contest, for which he was as little qualified as he would be for a beauty contest. If the purpose of his visit had been to open up the German question, he was not going home empty-handed, as the President and Secretary of State Dulles had shown that they hoped to make the German question negotiable, provided Moscow was seriously interested in negotiation.
Doris Fleeson indicates that the threatened fight against the choice of Los Angeles as the site for the 1960 Democratic national convention offered a revealing glimpse of the presidential power plays shaping up in the Democratic Party. The rising power of the West had won recognition in the choice of Los Angeles by a special eight-member site committee, their recommendation being subject to approval by the full national committee at a Washington meeting on February 27.
She finds it a preview of the looming struggle between liberals friendly to Adlai Stevenson, who now found their spiritual home in the West, and the big-city machines which inclined in the direction of Senator John F. Kennedy, though neither man wanted such a collision, at least not yet and both could lose ground from it. But they were at the mercy of their friends who naturally wanted the convention held in the climate most favorable to their hopes.
Standing on the sidelines with the balance of power were the Southern members of the national committee. The South's problem at present was that any overt use of the Southern power would hurt a candidate, significantly, the Southerners on the site committee being impartially divided in their votes among the contending cities for the site.
The Kennedy forces had made no
secret of the fact that Chicago was their preference for the
convention, and Mayor Richard J. Daley of that city had announced
that he would appeal to the full committee to reject Los Angeles in
its favor
It was equally true that although Mr. Stevenson was a resident of Illinois and had been its Governor, his power base at present was the big Western state of California, where he had been born nearly 59 years earlier, specifically in Los Angeles.
For primary and convention purposes, California would have a favorite son, Governor Pat Brown, elected by a prestige-laden plurality of a million votes the previous fall. But Governor Brown continued to insist that he felt committed to spend at least four years as Governor, and the state's politicians said that the hearts of the rank-and-file still belonged to Mr. Stevenson, the nominee of the party in both 1952 and 1956, albeit having lost overwhelmingly to President Eisenhower in both elections.
California's national committeeman, Paul Ziffren, was presently engaged in lining up a Western bloc for the ratification fight in Washington. It was anticipated that Jake Arvey of Chicago would be joined by the attack on Los Angeles by Carmine De Sapio of New York and Governor David Lawrence of Pennsylvania, a trio who had long been powerful in national committee affairs.
In New Orleans, Governor Lawrence had tried to slip in between Los Angeles and Chicago with Philadelphia as a choice for the site. Californians hoped that the same division would persist and wind up with the award to them. The open battle was being fought on considerations of communications, time and convenience. Those were all genuine and important factors and they were anxiously considered by the site committee. The communications industry naturally favored its Eastern centers and also would save money if Republicans and Democrats were to choose the same city. Its pressure worked in the favor of Chicago, as that was neutral ground between two leading Republican contenders, Vice-President Nixon of California and Governor Nelson Rockefeller of New York.
Mr. Ziffren had argued successfully with the site committee that the convention management could control the time of the convention sessions to meet every demand of good communications by the media. He insisted that Democratic gains west of the Mississippi entitled its consideration and attacked Chicago's near-monopoly on recent conventions.
Robert C. Ruark, in Palamos, Spain, indicates that he wanted to write his memoirs and had plenty of trenchant material for it but did not know the type of angle on which to hang it. The reason he wanted to write his memoirs was that it seemed to be a very lucrative business. Former President Truman "couldn't haberdash very good, and there is a divided vote on his ability to remember accurately from the presidential days, but he wrote his memoirs and got paid so much money that it took the publishing house a year or so of saving pennies to get even for the advance. Harry was great with giving 'em hell with his mouth, but when he and his spook sat down at the piano, all that came out was 'Abide with Me.' That year they weren't buying spirituals."
Now, President Eisenhower had "done real good, because he got his single literary effort classified as capital gains, representing a summation of his life's work, and avoiding the normal tax on income. I must say that Uncle Ike had the decency to give most of it back when he got steady work being President."
He indicates that the "greatest old pro of them all, Winnie the Church, never overlooked an easy buck in his lengthy career. I believe he got his memoirs classified as antiques, and didn't even have to pay the capital-gains bite, as England doesn't own any such animal. His little bouncing boy, Randolph, at the moment is going the old man one batter. Randolph is doing the unsanctioned memoirs of Sir Anthony Eden, and his premise is that somebody goofed on the Suez bit [in 1956]. Sir Anthony has not been available for comment, but the Beaverbrook press has, since they were printing bits and pieces of the Churchillian précis on the trials of poor old Tony in a changing world."
He finds that there was a new age of the memoir with the expected stories of Sherman Adams, "the needed man", in the words of the President prior to his eventual resignation a few months earlier. As "assistant president" he could not see "any political harm in letting a little man named Goldfine pick up his hotel tabs and buy him fancy clothes." He suggests that if jeopardizing one's public position as the right-hand man of the President was suitable bait for memoirs, the confidences of Mr. Adams ought do better than an entry of Doctor Zhivago and Lolita. But it would not do as well as the inevitable reminiscences of Mr. Goldfine, unless he were to decide that the Fifth Amendment applied to literature as well as Congressional hearings and forgotten cashiers checks.
The only topper of which he could think was a sedate recollection called "Who Flung the Stink Bomb in Mrs. Murphy's Tea House?" by Jimmy Hoffa, "the self-styled summer replacement for Genghis Khan and Alexander the Great."
He had read recent memoirs by two female drunks and a beat-up author's mistress in his fading days, but since he was not a female drunk or beat-up author's mistress, he could not handle that hook either and so was stuck. He says though that he had a title, provided he could find something or somebody against whom to get mad or some lurid confessions of personal frailty to set down in livid prose. "I rest, not on the Fifth Amendment but on the title: 'There Ain't No Such Animal, or, You Can't Get There from Here, Even to Eternity' by Robert Ruark, Everyman's Nobody." He concludes that the title alone ought make a "wow of a picture."
A letter writer says he had a high regard for the editorial page and was thus surprised and disappointed at the editorial of the previous Thursday ridiculing the experimental program given the prior Tuesday night in Ninniss Auditorium by several members of the faculty of Queens College and by a group of able musicians. The editorial had been clever but patently unfair. She could not understand how anyone attending the program could have seen or heard in it anything remotely suggesting an exhibit in a sideshow or a circus. She did not care for jazz for the most part and did not like to have her ideas of poetry tampered with. She had gone to the concert with grave misgivings but had found there a refreshing and provocative program of a high standard of excellence performed with dignity, humor and no inconsiderable talent. She wonders whether the editorial had been written from influence and not reality, questions whether it was possible that the author of the editorial might not have been in the auditorium where poetry was read to the accompaniment of jazz.
The editors note that the reader wrote from inference and not from reality. "The performance in question was reviewed January 14 on our Entertainment Page. The editorial in question appeared January 15 and playfully explored the idea of blending poetry and jazz. It was by no stretch of imagination a review."
Actually, there appeared no review in The News on January 14 or subsequently, certainly not one referencing anything about a circus, only a short summary of the program. There was extensive treatment of it in the Charlotte Observer of that date, but still no mention of a circus.
Parenthetically, in searching for that review, we ran across the opportunity of a lifetime for an aspiring thespian, the chance to win a role on "Bat Masterson" and earn up to $10,000 per week. You had better start twirling your Bat Masterson cane, available through the mail (as we still recall the cardboard tube in which it arrived), and your silver revolver, and, perhaps, you, too, can qualify as a legend in your own time. Holy head-spinner
Framed Edition
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