Conning Tower Down

The arch-conservative New York Herald Tribune surprised its readers last week by changing its typeface to a bigger, bolder cut. Last week Herald Tribune readers were further astonished when the paper suddenly and with no explanation dropped the famed Conning Tower column of Franklin Pierce Adams ("F. P. A."). Mr. Adams cheerfully explained in a characteristic sentence: "They just wanted me to work for less money, whereas I wanted to work for more." But New York newspapermen knew that the differenfce went deeper than dollars. Between stolid, self-conscious Mr. Reid and saturnine, self-satisfied Mr. Adams, for 16 years a quarrel had smoldered.

In 1921, F. P. A. left Mr. Reid's New York Tribune to join the World. Mr. Reid considered this an act of disloyalty. At the end of the World in 1931, Ogden Reid did not want F. P. A. back on his paper--now the Herald Tribune--on any terms. But Mrs. Ogden Reid knew the sheet needed a good column and overruled her husband. F. P. A. returned at $25,000 a year, which was later reduced to $21,852.

Three years ago, F. P. A. asked for a new contract, left his column out of the paper for one day until Publisher Reid, who does not like to sign things, acquiesced. The resulting document, to hold for three years, was signed by the columnist but never by the publisher. Last week when this "one-way" contract came up for renewal, Mrs. Reid could not break the impasse. Remarked Columnist Eleanor Roosevelt in My Day:

"I wish very much that F. P. A. and the New York Herald Tribune had not parted company so suddenly. ... If this could have been done in a more leisurely fashion we might have been able to find his column in another paper."

Other newspapers in which F. P. A." has conducted a column go back to the Chicago Journal of 1903. Next F. P. A. column appeared in the now long-dead New York Mail following year. Ten years later, F. P. A. was working for Ogden Reid. In the War, F. P. A. was a captain in the Intelligence Service, wrote a column, The Listening Post, in the A. E. F. newspaper, The Stars & Stripes. In his years of column-conducting, F. P. A. has been noted, like Chicago's late Bert Leston Taylor ("B. L. T.") as much for his contributors as for his own writings. Some favorite F. P. A. "contribs," under their own names and various pseudonyms, have been Poets Edna St. Vincent Millay, Dorothy Parker, Arthur Guiterman, Writers Sinclair Lewis Morrie (Of Thee I Sing) Ryskind, Ring Lardner, John Erskine, Edna Ferber, Composer Deems Taylor, Funnyman Groucho Marx.

Of late, an outstanding Conning Tower contributor has been Adwriter Al Graham ("Ye Oulde Al Graham"), who wrote for F. P. A. a burlesque weekly newsreel continuity. Mr. Adams' own verses have filled several books. His prose has been divided between sane and salty comment on the current U. S. scene, good-humored correction of misquotations and bad grammar by other journalists, and the weekly "Diary of Our Own Samuel Pepys," in which most of Manhattan's artists & writers sooner or later received mention. Addicted to punning, F. P. A. credits Dramatist George S. Kaufman with one of the Conning Tower's most famed play-on-words: "One man's Mede is another man's Persian." Two average F. P. Aisms: "He (Walter Lippmann) appears to think that Roosevelt is putting the Court before the horse."

"Mr. Lewis quoted: 'Let there be no moaning at the bar when I put out to sea.' Decoded it means 'Let there be no moaning of the car-manufacturers when I put out to C. I. O.' "

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