Toohey's Hit
Sirs:
Whoa, there! Wait a minute! What's this about the Noel Coward doings being the "first smash hit of a middling season" [TIME, Dec. 7]? What about Stage Door! What about Tovarich! I'll grant that the season has been even less than middling and the crop of flops has been a bumper one, but since first they opened both of these plays have been complete sellouts. Stage Door has never fallen below $19,500 a week at the Music Box and if that isn't a smash hit my name is Ivan Ivanovitch and not
JOHN PETER TOOHEY
Music Box Theatre New York City
Sirs:
UnTiMEworthy is the phrase in TIME'S review of Tonight at 8:30 calling Noel Coward's harlequinade the "first smash hit of a middling season." On Oct. 16 (day following opening of Gilbert Miller's Tovarich), owl-eyed Brooks Atkinson of New York Times chuckled, applauded, said: "Tovarich is the season's first hit." On same day, scholarly, professorial looking John Mason Brown of the Post said: "Tovarich is the first smash hit of the season." Richard Watts, Jr., blue-shirted, plumpish pundit of Herald Tribune called Tovarich "the first resounding dramatic smash of the season." Equally in accord were other critics.
Gilbert Miller's press department sits, scowls, awaits adequate reply.
JOHN LATHAM TOOHEY
New York City
John Peter Toohey and John Latham Toohey are father & son, rival pressagents. Father John Peter has been general representative for Producer Sam H. Harris (Stage Door) for six years. Son John Latham. 20, got his first job three months ago with Helen Deutsch, pressagent for Producer Gilbert Miller (Tovarich). A "smash hit'' can be judged by its box-office score. Week of Nov. 30: Tovarich: $21,000; Stage Door: $19,000; Tonight at 8:30: $27,000.--ED.
Matthews' Shirt
Sirs:
Permit us to refer to p. 36 of your issue of Nov. 23 from which the following quotation is taken:
"Who [A. E. Matthews] is reported to be so dissatisfied with the work of Manhattan laundries that he sends his soiled linen home every week to England."
... It is incredible that Actor Matthews could not find a single laundry in Manhattan (including the Champion, which boasts of a large theatrical clientele) to launder his linens satisfactorily. This seems even more unbelievable, since a number of British laundry operators visit New York annually to study American methods.
NILS E. HELLSTROM
Vice President Champion Laundry New York City
A. E. Matthews' enterprising pressagent, Tom Barrows, declares that Actor Matthews sends his starched linen to Baikie & Hogg, Ruchill, Glasgow; his unstarched laundry to Prospect Cottage, Bushy Heath, England; adds that Mr. Matthews "used to use the American Banker, a ten-day boat, but now uses the Queen Mary because he has only two shirts."--ED.
Abhorrent
Sirs:
I have been a subscriber to your publication almost from the beginning and have derived great satisfaction, pleasure and information from reading it; however this letter is written as a protest against the unwarranted, indelicate, vulgar way in which the birth of the Crawford child was described [TIME, Nov. 23].
As a member of a profession which throughout the ages has held sacred motherhood with all of its implications I feel I must record my indignation and disgust at the language your special writer used in describing this case.
Your magazine goes into the best homes in the country, and my own little son and daughters read it every week. To have their youthful minds shocked and seared by such a crude and vulgar description of one of the most sacred things of life is utterly 'abhorrent to me as a physician, as a father and as a gentleman.
JERE L. CROOK, A. M. M. D.
Past President
Southern Medical Association Jackson, Tenn.
Orchids
Sirs:
I think for sheer excellence in terseness of writing I have seldom read anything better than your account of Effie Crawford's pre-present and post-natal experiences. The condensation of economic, sociologic, psychologic, and physiologic into those brief paragraphs was indeed masterful.
I'm curious to know what rewrite man is responsible and hope you can convey my orchids. I notice a resemblance to the famous Coolidge "Obit" and I wonder if it was the same writer or if TIME'S school of journalism makes Maupassants of all its writers.
NORMAN R. GOLDSMITH
Pittsburgh, Pa.
First Citizen's Rector
Sirs:
Your article this week, Dec. 7, under Religion with reference to my call to become Rector of St. Thomas' Church in Washington contains two erroneous statements which might be misconstrued:
First, the occasion for considering me as "the toughest looking member of the outfit" was not in the U. S. Service; no officer would relish making such an impression. It was an expression of thought on the part of one man during the Boston Police Strike, when he did not know that this particular motorcycle cop was a clergyman, likewise, and indicated his surprise in finding a parson armed with a .45 and doing that job. Second, while true that I have not had the honor to meet the First Citizen of this country and the most distinguished parishioner at St. Thomas' Church, you are quite in error when you state that the choice of Rector was made by St. Thomas' Vestry "sight unseen"; they both saw and heard. I have never preached in St. Thomas' Church, nor have I attended a service there, but their new Rector was on inspection, just the same. They came: They saw: I won.
HOWARD S. WILKINSON
Rector-elect, St. Thomas' Church
Washington, D. C.
Garden City, N. Y.
Mrs. Merryman
Sirs:
We have just received a telegram from Washington which reads as follows, "Error Merryman picture--photographer transposed identification when picture was made."
We, of course, refer to the picture of Mrs. D. Buchanan Merryman [Mrs. Simpson's "Aunt Bessie," TIME, Nov. 23], the lady seated on the right and Mrs. Charles Bradley is the lady standing. The mistake was only brought to our attention this morning when we heard from Washington.
We regret the error made in the caption and are willing to make any adjustments that you think necessary.
C. R. ABBOTT
Treasurer
Underwood & Underwood News
New York City
Country, Country Club
Sirs:
It is stated in an item in TIME of Nov. 30 that I am one of those "responsible" for the editorial policy of the Post-Dispatch in the recent campaign. This is not true. While I do not think the nature of my connection with the paper is of public interest, anyone pretending to write about St. Louis newspapers from the inside should know that my work has always been confined to the news and my responsibilities as well.
Even the message was incorrectly quoted in your "Message to McAdams," although it consisted of only three words and two numbers. Written as it was on a bulletin board in a private office, it was peculiarly personal, a tribute to a departed friend paid in the presence of mutual friends. But your correspondent, trespassing upon privacy to publicize the incident, omitted the one essential fact which gave it meaning and significance. This fact was that the phrase, "the issue is between the Country and the Country Club," now in common use, was coined by Clark McAdams and printed in his "Just a Minute" column years ago. He firmly believed and often said that some day "the country" would win.
The message, ''Country, 523; Country Club, 8," was, therefore, a news report to an editorial writer and in terms intended to be both clear and complimentary.
It is perhaps too much to expect accuracy and comprehension of subject in keyhole reporting, but at least fairness to the dead might be hoped for. The omission not only left TIME'S item without point but withheld credit from a writer whose wit and insight had compressed volumes into a single incisive sentence, which illuminated the murky economics of the time like a flash of lightning.
O. K. BOVARD
Managing Editor St. Louis Post-Dispatch St. Louis, Mo.
Weird? We?
Sirs:
"... A strange craft that would not seem out of place among the weird illustrations of Popular Science Monthly." From TIME, Nov. 30, p. 15, col. 3.
Weird, TIME? We? "Strange, wild, or unearthly" my Webster's defines the word. If this is your understanding also, you must have us mixed up with a couple of other fellows.
We're down-to-earth, practical. Our appeal is to the matter-of-fact, mechanically-minded man, who can make things and do things, and who knows or wants to know what makes the wheels go 'round.
Permit me to quote briefly from a bulletin of instructions which I have been mailing to prospective contributors since 1929: "Popular Science Monthly is interested in facts--actualities-- things--and not ideas. Nothing of a grotesque, fanciful, or freakish nature is published."
If we're "weird," weird, too, must be our leading manufacturers, the laboratories of our great industries, the research staffs of our universities, the various institutions and foundations endowed for the advancement of science, our Patent Office, the U. S. Bureau of Standards, the Coast and Geodetic Survey, and the other divisions of our Government that are engaged in scientific or engineering work, for they are the principal sources to which we look for material, both text and pictures.
Weird, too, must be your new publication, LIFE, for its staff has repeatedly sought our aid in obtaining pictures. LIFE tried to engage the services of one of our staff artists, and the picture feature on pp. 22 and 23 of its first (Nov. 23) issue was done by an artist who for years has contributed to our pages and who in one portion of his picture supplied LIFE with a rubber-stamp copy of a drawing published by us in November 1925. (Clipping enclosed.)
Moreover, I personally referred a member of your staff to the photographer who made the Black Widow pictures published on pp. 84 and 85 of the Nov. 23 issue of LIFE. These photographs, by the way, first achieved publication on pp. 32, 33 and 34 of our issue of August 1936.
Now, TIME, I don't recall that we've ever asked a favor of you. You, though, have asked many of us, and we've obliged whenever possible. Why not be a bit neighborly in return, especially since we all seem to be "weird" together?
RAYMOND J. BROWN
Editor
Popular Science Monthly
New York City
TIME & England
Sirs:
Front-paged in the N. Y. Sun is the news that TIME has at last been allowed to appear uncensored and unexpurgated on newsstands in England. This is indeed a strange commentary! How much better it would have been for the British, if, instead of devoting so much effort to expurgating TIME and debating the propriety of TIME'S news in the House of Commons, they had let the people know the truth twelve months ago. . . .
From the day the King had Mrs. Simpson's name published in his Court Circular he apparently threw over all discretion about his romance and Mrs. Simpson became the biggest news since the declaration of War. TIME reported it, not as chitchat, but soberly--too soberly, I sometimes thought.
So what? So TIME was damned and deleted in Parliament and on the British newsstands. And also--so England is out a darn good King and the world was almost out a darn good Empire.
C. JACKSON HOLDRUN
Bristol, Pa.
Censored not by Parliament or other officialdom but by news-distributors, who feared England's strict libel laws, were TIME'S reports of the Edward-Simpson story, beginning Sept. 24, 1934. Last week Lord Beaverbrook's London Daily Express, world's largest daily (circulation: 2,040,599), said: "Perhaps if the newspapers had shown less 'restraint' and told more of things earlier on, events would have been different. The public might have better grasped and understood the issues."
--ED.
Man of the Year (Cont'd)
Sirs:
May I nominate, as my choice of Man of the Year, Michael McManus, who, in TIME, Nov. 30, had the gall to nominate boisterous Jim Farley for Man of the Year?
A. PARKS
New Haven, Conn.
Sirs:
We, the undersigned, nominate for TIME'S Man of the Year: Mrs. Wally Simpson, and wish her and King Edward VIII great happiness --if and when.
CHARLES E. BARKL
President
W. M. GRIFFITH
Ass't Cashier
Farmers & Merchants Bank
Huron, S. Dak.
Sirs:
In regard to the candidate for the honor of Man of the Year, I do believe that if the ladies expressed themselves, King Edward VIII would be unanimously chosen (and undoubtedly be rebuked for being so unpatriotic as to not support President Roosevelt. The gentleman has had quite enough support for one man in the past election, therefore, can't see any unpatriotism in the gesture).
I am anxious to know of your choice, however; for some reason or other, I always agree with you.
LILLIAN EPLEY
Spokane, Wash.
As the readers' poll nominating TIME'S Man of the Year entered its last week, far out in front of a field of 51 were President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Duke of Windsor, Mrs. Simpson.--ED.
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