Pulitzer Prizes

Guarded like a state secret, the annual Pulitzer Prize awards for distinction in U. S. letters and journalism were revealed this week when Columbia University's dignified old President Nicholas Murray Butler portentously puffed to his feet at a Manhattan banquet and read off the list of winners chosen by the advisory board of Columbia's School of Journalism. The awards:

Novel. To no one's amazement, Atlanta's tiny Margaret Mitchell got $1,000 for Gone With The Wind, fabulously successful first novel about the Civil War (TIME, July 6).

Play. Play-of-the-year, according to the Pulitzer pickers, was You Can't Take It With You, a genial, highly professional piece of playwrighting by George S. Kaufman (Merrily We Roll Along, Stage Door), and Moss Hart (Once In A Lifetime, Jubilee) (TIME, Dec. 28). Sombre-eyed, successful Mr. Kaufman was in on the 1932 award for his part in Of Thee I Sing.

History. Van Wyck Brooks (The Ordeal Of Mark Twain), was $1,000 richer because the judges agreed that his scholarly, readable The Flowering of New England (TIME, Aug. 24) was the historical-work-of-the-year.

Biography of greatest distinction was Hamilton Fish; The Inner History Of The Grunt Administration (TIME, Oct. 26), by Allan Nevins, who also won in 1933 for his study of Grover Cleveland.

Foreign correspondence of greatest distinction, the Pulitzer committee decided, was that contributed to the New York Times by able Anne O'Hare McCormick. For 15 years a Tzmeswoman in Europe, Mrs. McCormick last year was given the distinction of being the first of her sex to be seated at the Times's official editorial council table.

Cartoon. To tall Clarence Daniel Batchelor of the New York News (TIME, Oct. 26) went the $500 cartoonist's award for a picture of a harlot labeled "War" enticing a boy labeled "Any European Youth." Caption: "Come on in, I'll treat you right. I used to know your daddy."

Editorial. Most distinguished editorial writing was that of John Whitefield Owens of the Baltimore Sun (see col. 2).

Service to a community by its newspaper was most admirably exemplified, the committee held, by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, whose publisher, Joseph Pulitzer, is on the board of award. For exposure of fraudulent election registration in St. Louis last summer (TIME, Sept. 28), the Post-Dispatch was given a big gold Pulitzer plaque.

Reporting. The $1,000 for a distinguished example of reporting was split five ways by John J. O'Neill of the New York Herald Tribune, William L. Laurence of the New York Times, Howard W. Blakeslee of the Associated Press, Gobind Behari Lai of Universal Service and David Dietz of the Scripps-Howard Newspapers, for their coverage of the Harvard Tercentennial celebrations last autumn.

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