Broadway Angle

One noonday last week in a thousand newspaper offices, when the automatic news tickers jangled the signal, FLASH! and copy boys raced to news desks with yellow slips reading CALVIN COOLIDGE DEAD, a thousand news editors knew instantly what to do. But the editor of the New York Morning Telegraph was puzzled.

The Telegraph is a 100-year-old paper catering exclusively to showfolk and followers of the turf. At some periods it has handled general news but for the past two years it has been bound by an inflexible rule to print only news of stage, screen, racetrack. It was probably the only daily in the U. S. which carried not one line about the Lindbergh baby kidnapping, to which it was unable to find a Broadway '"angle."

Now, for the second time within a year, the Telegraph was confronted by a momentous story beyond its province. How to save its face? The news editor pondered. Horseracing? Cinema? It was impossible to associate Calvin Coolidge with either. Stage? . . . That was it! The editor sent a newshawk scurrying to the office of Sam Harris, producer of the satirical musicomedy Of Thee I Sing. Next day the Telegraph front-paged:

CALVIN COOLIDGE DEATH REACTS ON BROADWAY

"At five minutes of two the cast of Of Thee I Sing . . . was foregathering backstage in normal and unexcited fashion. Five minutes later there was confusion and dismay.

" 'Coolidge is dead!'

" 'We'll have to change those lines-- we'll have to change those lines. Where's Ryskind? Get Ryskind!'

"For two of the best laugh lines in Of Thee I Sing concerned Calvin Coolidge. One was the remark of the secretary in the White House who picks up the telephone receiver and announces: 'The Coolidges don't live here any more!'

" 'Change that to the Hoovers,' came the order--but what to do with the other line? It came at the end of the conference in a hotel room when a publisher ordered the presses stopped because John P. Wintergreen had announced his one-word platform in the Presidential campaign--Love.

" 'Call Coolidge and tell him I want 1,000 words on love tomorrow morning!' shouted the publisher. . . .

" 'Make it Brisbane and see how it goes!' [Ryskind] settled the matter."

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