Exit Crying

The owl-eyed little man in the blue suit and glossy silk tie stood at the rostrum in Philadelphia's Municipal Auditorium and squinted misty-eyed down at the placards waving back and forth. They all trumpeted the same theme: "Jimmy, Don't Leave Us"; "Jimmy, We Need You!" For two minutes James Caesar Petrillo, 66, blew his nose into the first of two handkerchiefs, mopped his eyes with the other. Finally, the words came in a convulsive croak: "Little Caesar is bowing out. Goodbye, Little Caesar!"

To take Petrillo's place as president of the American Federation of Musicians, the assembled delegates elected Little Caesar's own nominee, Herman David Kenin, 56, the union's West Coast representative. A onetime fiddler and bandleader, New Jersey-born Kenin practiced law in Portland, Ore. and dabbled in union politics for 22 years, gave up his law practice in 1943, when he became a member of the A.F.M.'s executive board. His grey-flannel-suited unionism is as remote from Jimmy's overpadded whoop-and-holler style as the violin section from the brasses. The Petrillo breed, lamented Jimmy last week, is extinct: "I used to be able to say to the bosses, 'Go to hell,' and they went to hell. Now you tell them 'Go to hell,' and they tell you back, 'You go to hell.' What the unions need these days is smooth guys." Responded Smooth Guy Kenin: "I cannot hope to fill the shoes of our beloved Jimmy--the greatest labor leader of our times."

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