A LETTER FROM THE PUBLISHER

During the preparation of TIME'S Feb. 16 issue, Barron Beshoar, who runs our Denver bureau, received a story request from our editors in New York which, he knew, could not amount to more than a paragraph, at best. Like any good reporter, however, he set out to get the story. This is what happened:

That week, our People editor, who is interested in almost everybody, read in a gossip column that Gilda Gray, famed oldtime shimmy dancer and Ziegfeld Follies star, was seriously ill at Sedalia, Colo. He wired Beshoar: "What is she doing in Sedalia, and what is the matter with her?"

Beshoar, who already had a solid week's work on hand, picked up a phone and tried to call Sedalia, which is about 20 miles from Denver. It had no telephone exchange. Then, knowing from long experience that few people are more hep to a community or more helpful to a reporter than smalltown telephone operators, he called the exchange at Castle Rock, a town near Sedalia. The operator did not know Gilda Gray or her whereabouts, but she suggested that a call to Dr. O. J. Butterfield at Jarre Canon might be fruitful.

Dr. Butterfield was out. Beshoar called the Castle Rock operator again and they talked the situation over. Finally, after considerable recollection of past telephone calls, she decided that the party Beshoar was looking for might be staying at the Abbe ranch, some miles to the south.

Well, it turned out that the Abbes didn't have a telephone; so, after a conversation with the long-distance operator, Beshoar settled for the Paul Brown ranch near Larkspur, about four miles from the Abbe layout. Mrs. Brown said that Miss Gray had indeed been at the Abbe ranch, but she had removed herself to the Tom Star cattle ranch in the mountains west of Sedalia. A call to the grocery store in Larkspur ought to settle the matter, she thought; the Stars had no telephone.

The Larkspur grocer said that the Stars probably wouldn't be in again for several days. At that juncture Dr. Butterfield phoned. He suggested getting in touch with the grocery store at Johnson's Corner, which had a clerk named Willard Star who was probably related to Tom Star. Willard got on the phone and said he was indeed Tom Star's nephew. He knew Miss Gray was at the ranch, but, not having been there lately, he couldn't vouch for her condition. His father might know, though, and he gave Beshoar the number of some people who would call him to the telephone. Willard's father didn't recollect if Miss Gray were ill, but he offered to get out his automobile and drive into the mountains to find out. Wrote Beshoar:

"By this time it was dark; the thermometer read 10 above, and it was snowing. When it got to be 9 o'clock, I was more worried about my volunteer than about Gilda Gray. I pictured him wrecked in an arroyo, slowly freezing to death. But by 9:30 he called to say he had fixed everything: Gilda was on her way to a telephone and would call immediately."

She did, saying that she had been very sick for about six months (nervous exhaustion; generally run-down condition), but was beginning to feel fine ("eating eggs fresh out of the chickens every morning") in the hands of her old friends, the Stars. She expected to return to New York soon to resume work on her "life story."

Beshoar relayed this information to our People editor and went on with his week's work. As so often happens, however, the Gilda Gray item did not get printed. It now reposes in TIME'S morgue--along with a score or more of other items that failed in that week's competition for a place in our People department.

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