Keen Teen

A 21-year-old girl named Valerie Lauder is a person to be reckoned with in Chicago journalism. Her "Keen Teens" column is one of the Chicago Daily News's better drawing-cards, and her Keen Teen Press Club has interviewed almost every celebrity who has blown into the Windy City during the past year.

Last week, Val invited Chicago's two mayoralty candidates to press conferences. Though tired and busy, the candidates dutifully submitted to 45 minutes of questioning, and then left to await the printed verdict of Val's high-school journalists.

It all began when Van Johnson came to town. Val, a copy girl being tried as a picture-caption writer, persuaded an elderly friend to pretend to be a Johnson fan. Then Val talked City Editor Clem Lane into doing a story on "Van's oldest admirer."

City Editor Lane, who had been thinking of starting a teen-age column, gave Val the job. Chicago's bobbysoxers screeched with delight. Val never preached to them ("Kids don't like that"), seldom used jive talk ("Kids don't talk like that unless they're showing off"). She simply reported the news of parties, juke-joints, new fads, new records.

One day she decided to share her pleasures by creating a Press Club, and soon a teen-aged horde was released on any loose celebrity around. When Harry Truman visited Chicago last spring, Val suggested to her boss that the Press Club interview the President. "Little girl," said he, "go out and buy yourself an ice-cream cone." But Val talked her boss into it, and Truman agreed. Her conference was the only one the President gave in Chicago. Said Val: "It was precedent-breaking. It made history. It was keen."

Now able to vote, Val couldn't decide last week which of the two accommodating mayoralty candidates she would vote for. Of all the news characters in all the world (which are the terms she thinks in), whom would she most like to interview? "Stalin, or maybe Molotov. Of course," she added, "I'd rather meet [Movie Actor] Peter Lawford than anyone else. He's keen."

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