"Mary the Virgin"

Five Manhattan knaves and two of their queens quailed before State and Church last week. They had duped 400 Roman Catholic priests and 6,000 laymen out of $2,000,000 in a fake moving picture project. They enhanced their scheme with the names of men high in the hierarchy, in business and in politics. More enormously, they had trafficked with Christ's Mother as the heroine of a cinema show to be called Mary the Virgin.

Pius XI's continual commands for public and private morality and his railing at the modern cinema fertilized the soil for this roguery. The Manhattan flimflammers went into Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland, six States which contain one-half the U. S. Roman Catholic population,* and found priests eager to hear the prospectus of their "National Diversified Corp." The corporation proposed to make "movie and talkie pictures of thoroughly high-class, moral type, such as would appeal to church people." They promised that their major picture, Mary the Virgin, would be reverent in plot, the scenes proper. The hierarchy would certainly approve. But money was essential. They would sell stock in National Diversified Corp. to serious-minded believers.

Guileless priests bought generously. They also introduced the crooks to their parishioners. Where zeal did not rise to the buying point, the rogues made names make sales. They mentioned as investors or authorizers Cardinals Hayes, O'Connell and Mundelein; Archbishop Curley of Baltimore, Bishop Shahan of Washington; Alfred Emanuel Smith and John Jacob Raskob; Michael J. Meehan, stockbroker, and James A. Flaherty, supreme councillor of the Knights of Columbus. One of the rogues, Jerome D. Kline, played with his own name. To solicit German Catholics he was Jerome D. Kline. To Irish Catholics he became "J. D. Kane."

Credulous Catholics paid $2,000,000 cash and obligated themselves for $1,000,000 more. The promoters acquired control of Sono-Art Productions Inc. Mary the Virgin was held up while Sono-Art produced Blaze O'Glory, The Rainbow Man (both featuring Eddie Dowling, a popular Catholic).

Last May, National Diversified Corp. went bankrupt. It took a long time for the dupes to realize their status. After realization came intelligent action.. The promoters had used the mails in their fraud. On that score a Federal Grand Jury indicted the wicked seven last week.

Prosecutor is George Zerdin Medalie, Jewish U. S. Attorney recently appointed to succeed Charles Henry Tuttle, an Episcopalian (TIME, Jan. 19). Mr. Medalie last week flayed the cinema scheme as "one of the boldest racketeering ventures that ever has been pulled at the expense of persons with religious and moral ideals."

*Roman Catholics rank first among all denominations in all the States except Kansas, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Idaho, Utah.

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