Angel in the Wings

For 3 1/2 months the presses of Manhattan's fallen Star (nee PM) had gathered dust. For four weeks, pudgy Theodore Olin Thackrey, ousted by his estranged wife Dolly from the New York Post Home News (TIME, April 18), had been an editor without a mouthpiece. Last week a way was found to employ both editor and presses. With money furnished by a generous backer, Ted Thackrey bought the Star's equipment, prepared to launch a new 10-c- morning tabloid in New York City next week. Its name: the Compass.

The Compass will start out on a modest 24-page scale, pointing its needle to what Thackrey calls "the non-Communist left." Working as publisher, editor and managing editor, Wallaceite Thackrey thinks he can make money on 65,000 circulation and whatever advertising he can get. His editorial staff of 25 will include Medical Writer Albert Deutsch and Washington Correspondent I. F. ("Izzy") Stone, both survivors of PM and the Star, whom Thackrey harbored at the Post. The Compass' sport editor will be Stanley Woodward, onetime head of the New York Herald Tribune sport staff, lately editor of the short-lived Sports Illustrated magazine.

One Woman's Causes. The angel who backed Ted Thackrey's new start in journalism is 82-year-old Mrs. Emmons Blaine, a strong-willed Chicago philanthropist who bought full-page ads in her Cousin Bertie McCormick's Tribune to plump for Roosevelt in '36, '40 and '44, when the Trib was denouncing him. Daughter of Reaper King Cyrus McCormick and heiress to his millions, "Aunt Anita" Elaine is the daughter-in-law of James G. ("Rum, Romanism and Rebellion") Elaine. She lives in a cavernous house on East Erie Street, is rarely seen in Chicago society, but gives occasional decorous parties, such as her dinner two weeks ago for 70 guests, including Henry Wallace and his junketing party of European left-wing politicians.

Aunt Anita, a sweet and shrewd old lady who wears fussy, turn-of-the-century clothes, has given away something like $10 million in her time. She put $2,000,000 into Chicago's progressive Frances W. Parker School, sent $100 to the family of each of the in victims of the 1947 Centralia mine disaster, tossed some $50,000 into Wallace's campaign collection plates last fall, and donated a round $1,000,000 to endow the new, leftist Foundation for World Government.

One World. Ted Thackrey met Mrs. Elaine for the first time about three weeks ago, through a mutual friend who intended to put up half the money for the Compass. When the friend backed out, Mrs. Elaine coolly agreed to put up both halves. For around $2,000,000 she will get all the preferred stock; Thackrey will hold 51% of the common, and complete control.

"My purpose," said Aunt Anita last week in a voice without a quaver, "is to help create a better world state. You have only to think of the need for this thing . . . look at the press of the world today . . ." Said Thackrey earnestly: "We are not going to lose money." But if he did there would be more where his grubstake came from.

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