Comics & Courtesy

Most metropolitan newspapers keep heir private squabbles politely hidden from public gaze, but Washington, D. C. presents two notable exceptions. One is the Washington Post, published by bald, scholarly Eugene Meyer, onetime Governor of the Federal Reserve Bank. The other is Hearst's Washington Herald, run by saucy, red-haired Eleanor ("Cissy") Patterson.

They quarrel about everything, rudely finger-point each other's blunders in derisive front-page jibes. Their longest-standing squabble, concerning comic strips, reached a ludicrous end last week. It began immediately after Banker Meyer bought the decadent Post at auction from the McLean estate two years ago. Until then the Post had carried, exclusively in Washington, the comic strips of Andy Gump, Winnie Winkle, Gasoline Alley, Dick Tracy. While the Post was in receivership, smart Editor Patterson deftly slipped in, snapped up the comic strip contracts for her Herald. Into court marched irate Publisher Meyer, insisting that the old contracts (with Chicago Tribune Syndicate) belonged to him alone (TIME, July 24, 1933). For the next 20 months, while lawyers wrangled, injunctions were issued and dismissed, and the case climbed from court to court, Andy Gump, Winnie Winkle et al. appeared both in the Post and the Herald.

Last week the Supreme Court of the U. S. declared Eugene Meyer winner. The Post celebrated its victory with a six-column cartoon showing an imposing robed figure (Supreme Court) sternly pointing to a facsimile of the Post's front page, toward which Andy Gump, Winnie Winkle, Skeezix & family, Dick Tracy obediently trudged. Caption: "To Your Post!"

Also, obediently, the Herald dropped the forbidden comic strips next day. But its Sunday color pages, already made up, included those features. "Cissy" Patterson asked Publisher Meyer's permission to publish them that one last time, sparing her the expense of a last-minute change. Hesitantly Mr. Meyer agreed on condition that the Herald print a front-page box acknowledging the Post's courtesy. "Cissy" Patterson asked time to consider. The deadline came & went, with no further word from "Cissy." Thereupon the Post published its own announcement that the Herald would appear next day with Sunday comics by special courtesy of the Post. After one edition the Post hastily killed its own announcement. Reason : Editor Patterson had quietly removed the disputed features, had substituted Brick Bradford, Mandrake the Magician, Rose O'Neill's Kewpies and an animal feature by Frank Buck, rushed to her from Manhattan by air express.

Matching the Post in bad humor "Cissy" Patterson then sent her chauffeur to Eugene Meyer's home with a gorgeously decorated box. Inside was her card inscribed: "So as not to disappoint you.' Beneath a spray of freesia, sweet peas anc forget-me-nots, Publisher Meyer found pound of raw meat.

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