Romance To Roseland

In Manhattan is a dance hall called Roseland. Here, in a ballroom, wide and long, two orchestras manufacture music which substitutes speed and clamor for melody and merriment. Here, with set faces, dances nightly a band of "hostesses." From vaudeville (where they have failed) they come, from little towns that seemed too slow, from little flats that seemed too small. Dancing is no pleasure to them. Dancing is their business. Be it the breath of a drunken sailor that blows warm past their cheeks or the wit of the dullest tomlinson that assails their ears, they must dance and sometimes smile.

To Roseland from El Paso, Tex., came Claire Patton. She had been married when she was very young and divorced before she was very much older. At Roseland a girl can make (with good fortune and tips) about $60 weekly. So Hostess Patton earned easily a living wage, devoted leisure hours to improving herself with courses at Columbia University. She used to check her textbooks at Roseland's desk before she prepared to extend Roseland hospitality to all and sundry.

Then to Roseland from Boston and the front rank of U. S. tycoons came Archibald Robertson Graustein, head of the International Paper Co. (now subsidiary of International Paper & Power Co.). Great was Mr. Graustein's place and many were his cares, but he bade dull care adieu, learned Roseland's ropes. He found that payment of 85-c- entitled him to three dances (three minutes apiece). After these initial dances, men who had brought their own girls danced with them at 5-c- per dance. But girl-less men (like Mr. Graustein) danced with hostesses, paid at the rate of 35-c- for three dances. And men who wished to sit out dances with their hostesses could accompany them to a (chaperoned) room off the ballroom, there sit for one hour for $2.80 (of which the girl collected $2). Many a $2.80 spent Mr. Graustein after he had met Hostess Patton. It was in this room, indeed, that the Prince came to Cinderella.

Simple was the rest of the story--only the happy ending remained. For, much as Hostess Patton may at first have questioned the story of riches and position to which this middle-aged (Mr. Graustein is 43) suitor referred, she found that the unbelievable was true, that the incredible was a fact. One day (March 14),* in El Paso Tycoon Graustein and Hostess Patton were married, and from Roseland's hostesses the fairest flower is gone.

Peculiar was the newspaper treatment of the Graustein-Patton marriage. Here was surely a saga of romance without a trace of scandal. Here was modern Manhattan's version of the Prince and Cinderella--a syncopated setting for an ageless theme. Yet the story was announced (two months after the wedding) in Zit's Weekly, theatrical trade-paper. Later the tabloids carried it. But solid, standard papers--Times, World, Herald Tribune, Sim, Post--ignored the week's--and one of the year's--greatest human interest story.

Possibly tabloid emphasis on sex and scandal has made conservatives timid of love and romance. More likely, however, appeared the theory that city editors neglected the story simply because they were late in discovering it. Had they got the story on the day of the Texas wedding it would have front-paged every paper. But it is not in their occurrence but in their telling that events age, To a man unconscious since Nov. 10, 1918, news of the armistice would be great news. To a public unconscious of the Graustein wedding this latest and best of Cinderella stories remains fresh and green. Until it is told, no story is old.

* One month before Tycoon Graustein's interests in many a newspaper were being widely noised, vigorously assailed (.TIME, April 22).