Hearst Housecleaning

A laundryman was swept out as publisher of Hearst's Washington Times last week and the son of a carpet-cleaner prepared to move in. The laundryman is George Preston Marshall, handsome, flamboyant owner of Washington's prosperous

Palace Laundry system. He was the 17th Times publisher hired & fired by Hearst in the last ten years. Long after the first 16 are forgotten, beery oldsters will chuckle over the escapades of the 17th.

Exactly a year ago tall, dark George Marshall, without a speck of publishing experience, was put in charge of the Times. He began life as a smalltime vaudeville hoofer. During the War his father died, left him a bankrupt laundry. From it Son George built the most successful laundry business in Washington, with 50 gaudy blue-&-gold branch stores on strategic street corners, each blazoning the slogan "Long Live Linen."

Convivial, gregarious George Marshall belongs to the night-club era of his friend "Jimmy" Walker. Like the onetime Mayor of New York, he dresses in breathtaking ensembles, arrives late for all appointments. A two-hour nap after 5 p. m. tunes him up for his evening rounds. He delights in confounding dowagers. He astounded a dinner party one night by shrilling: "Congratulate me, folks! I've finally arrived socially. Today I got the sheets of Mrs. 'Bordy* Harriman." His friendship with the elder Hearst sons, notably John Randolph, prompted the traditional summons to the Hearst castle at San Simeon, Calif., the offer of a job.

Immediately Publisher Marshall set out to make the Times a fit background for himself. He installed a gold-braided doorman with "Times" across his visor, put all the art staff in smocks with "Times" across the fronts, had the building painted pale grey outside, white-&-tan within, had large gilt eagles painted on all doors.

Not all the Marshall innovations were trivial. He persuaded fashionable young matrons of the capital to work for the Times. Betsy Caswell, widow of the Shenandoah's Commander Lansdowne, did the cooking page; beauteous Mrs. Grace Hendrick Eustis reported politics; plump Nina Carter Tabb covered the hunts of the swank Middleburg and Warrentown set. Hugely successful, their columns helped budge the Times' circulation up to 106,800, only 6,300 less than the venerable Washington Star.

Nevertheless Publisher Hearst was not pleased. Trouble-shooting executives were sent to Washington to squelch Publisher Marshall, to order him to keep, out of the editorial rooms and attend solely to business. He became a Hearst problem. Last week he became a deeply aggrieved Hearst has-been.

George Marshall's successor is nearly everything that George Marshall is not. Arthur Grover Newmyer, 49, quit as general manager of the New Orleans Item-Tribune to join Publisher Hearst. His new job will complete a long, meritorious cycle: He began life as a $3.50-a-week stenographer on the Washington Times 35 years ago, when the late Walter Hutchins owned it. Arthur Newmyer, whose father ran a steam carpet-cleaning plant in Washington, rose to be night city editor. When the late unlamented Frank A. Munsey bought the paper and began to fire newshawks right & left, Newmyer transferred to the advertising side, his successful profession ever since. Twenty-three years ago Publisher James Mcllhany Thomson of the New Orleans Item-Tribune hired Adman Newmyer as business manager. Under his management the papers thrived, and he with them.

*Mrs. J. Borden ("Daisy") Harriman, eminent Democratic hostess.

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