Logic

'Columnist Hedda Hopper is used to the logic of Hollywood even if some of her far-flung readers are not. Out of Hedda's hopper last week came this breathless item: "Louis B. Mayer tells me it's not true that he and Lorena Danker have made plans for matrimony. In fact, he and his Margaret have no plans for divorce even."

Mrs. A of Boise

Most people can't quite decide what to do when they get a questionnaire from Who's Who. Mrs. Margaret Cobb Ailshie of Boise, Idaho receives one regularly, and invariably tosses it into the wastebasket. Says she: "I wouldn't know what to say. I never went to college."

Last week the paper she publishes, the Idaho Statesman (total morning and evening circulation: 43,000), celebrated its 82nd anniversary, a ripe old age in the far Far West. She, and her father before her, have run the paper for 57 years. The Statesman is Idaho's leading paper. Since she also owns the Twin Falls Telegram (circ. 4,000), Margaret Ailshie is undisputed editorial queen of the picturesque Snake River valley, and at 60 one of the few successful "shirt sleeve" woman publishers in the U.S.

To her staff, Margaret Ailshie is known as "Mrs. A." During the war, when her rambling, 77-year-old home became a virtual hotel and nightclub, she was the unofficial "Mrs. U.S.O." of Boise. She befriended hundreds of A.A.F. boys from a nearby pilot training school; six of them are now on her staff. Visiting celebrities admire her apparently limitless supply of good liquor, her ability in a free-swinging political discussion (she is a staunch Republican) or in a game of craps.

Mrs. A is publicity shy, but faithfully reports her own frequent parking violations in the Statesman. She drives a Buick convertible because, she says, if she should crash into the river she could always get out and swim. She pays herself $1,000 a month for her 18-hour day.

Lincoln to Winchell. Mrs. A's newspaper dates from Idaho's gold rush days and the Civil War. First day headline:

PARTICULARS OF THE GREAT RAID INTO

MARYLAND. Republican from the start, the Statesman supported Lincoln, alarmed Boise's pro-Confederates in its first editorial: "We are opposed to the rebellion . . . and to everybody who is not opposed to it." A sign in the editorial office is a relic of the days when the paper shared headquarters with Ben Holliday's Overland Stage Line (15 days to Atchison, Kans.; fare $300).

Calvin Cobb, father of Mrs. Ailshie, bought into the Statesman in 1889; she inherited it when he died in 1928. Employes feared a fluttery tenure of petticoat management, but Margaret Ailshie hired bright young men to take over the editorial, business and composing rooms. Occasionally, on subjects dear to her heart, she lashes out with a stinging editorial of her own.

Her 6-ft.-2-in. father, the first man in Boise to wear a dress suit and smoke tailor-made cigarets, once dismissed Teddy Roosevelt's newly formed Bull Moose party in a three-word editorial which said: "Teddy, you stink!" The present publisher can be similarly succinct. When Franklin D. Roosevelt told the nation that all it had to fear was fear itself, Mrs. A demurred editorially: "This is not so. The only thing the nation fears is Mr. Roosevelt."

In 1942 she bought out the competing, afternoon Capitol News and started the Evening Statesman. Two years later she invaded Twin Falls. She bought a plane so that the Statesman could keep on top of state news, livened up her pages with Winchell, Pegler, Dorothy Dix, Dick Tracy, Li'l Abner, and Blondie.

General manager of the three Ailshie properties today is soft-spoken James L. Brown, who impressed Mrs. A when he was selling linotypes. Managing editor of the Statesman is a war hero: Lieut. Colonel Thomas Lanphier Jr., who shot down Admiral Yamamoto, helped sink a Jap destroyer. He is one of the A.A.F. pilots whom she "adopted."

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