Fadeout

As one title on a cinema screen slowly fades out and another title slowly takes its place, so with the beginning of this week the name Lindbergh was gradually vanishing from the black, multi-column newspaper headlines, the name Byrd was gradually appearing in its stead. The man who had flown to Paris was being succeeded by the man who was planning to fly to Paris. Street-sweepers had cleared away the fragments of the telephone books that fluttered in shreds about Colonel Lindbergh in Manhattan. Street-sweepers were clearing away the petals of the roses that were thrown at him in St. Louis. Newspapers, ranged in rows on newstands, no longer looked like photograph galleries of a single face. Probably Colonel Lindbergh himself was glad when the last cheer was cheered and the last speech was spoken. "Never have I seen anything as hopelessly tired as that boy," said Historian Hendrik Willem Van Loon--and the remark was made even before the St. Louis welcome. Toward the end of his receptions, indeed, Colonel Lindbergh appeared tired, gloomy, haggard. Asked how he felt one morning, he replied: "I don't know, I haven't read the newspapers yet." Some 18 medals have been given to him; he has been made a Colonel and a Boy Scout; at the Hotel Brevport, Raymond Orteig presented him with varicolored, hideously over-ornamented check for $25,000 --the Orteig Prize for the New York-Paris flight. In the U. S. Embassy in Paris there is already a Lindbergh bust; in Detroit 100,000 special Lindbergh airmail stamps were sold in an hour. Then, too, he has received a gold, diamond-studded pass, entitling him to lifetime admission to all Shubert theatres. At the end, what he most needed was rest, sleep. "What will Colonel Lindbergh do now?" is the universal question, universally unanswered. It was said that he might make a nation-wide tour in the Spirit of St. Louis. The Ryan Aircraft Corp., makers of the Lindbergh plane, have already received orders for 20 similar ships. With such stimulation of increase in aviation, it was thought that Colonel Lindbergh might head a commercial-and-passenger aviation company, financed by his flight backers. At any event it seemed certain that Colonel Lindbergh would not abandon aviation for acting, would not appear either on screen or stage. There would be no feature films with Colonel Lindbergh flying over hill and dale to the rescue of a distressed cinema heroine; no vaudeville acts in which Colonel Lindbergh would appear before the Atlantic Ocean painted on a backdrop and climb into an airplane assembled and reassembled by brawny stagehands. Less the flight should be entirely free from commercialism, however, numerous business houses have sought permission to incorporate under the Lindbergh name, and soon there may be many a Lindbergh bootery, many a Lindy Shoe Shine Parlor. Advertisers, too, have "tied up," more or less securely, with the Lindbergh exploit. Aside from its emotional aspects, the Lindbergh flight was most important as an inspiration to increased interest in aviation. In speeches in New York City, Colonel Lindbergh repeatedly urged the creation of a great airport, like the Le Bourget field in Paris. He also emphasized the war-time importance of airplanes and (somewhat like onetime Colonel Mitchell of the army air service) said that airplane bombing had been brought to such accuracy that if 20 planes went after a battleship the battleship would certainly be destroyed. It was not so much what Colonel Lindbergh said that was important as the fact that, for the first time, the gospel of aviation was preached by a national hero to whose words the country was ready to listen. (Since the Colonel's return, aviation recruiting centers have been swamped by applicants for the flying service.) From a passenger-carrying standpoint, at least, the U. S. is far behind Europe in aviation--last year, for example, thousands airplaned across the English Channel in a regular airline service. U. S. aviation enthusiasts saw in the Lindbergh flight an opportunity for aviation to catch the popular imagination.

A side issue, yet socially important, was the way in which the entire Lindbergh story emphasized the new "power of the press." As a molder of opinion on vital political issues, the newspapers may have almost ceased to function, but the development of press associations, of syndicates and of special writers has enabled them to take any outstanding event and bring thou- sands upon thousands of words upon it before the eyes of virtually every literate U. S. inhabitant. Who has not seen the Lindbergh photographs? Who, asked to whom the nicknames "Slim," "Lucky," apply, would hesitate for an answer? To be sure, the stories written about Colonel Lindbergh were often phrased in bombastic and maudlin journalese. Mrs. Lindbergh, dignified, poised, was the theme of countless prose variations of Mother Machree. Had Colonel Lindbergh possessed a wife or sweetheart, one hesitates to think what would have been written about her. What Colonel Lindbergh did and said at his various receptions was fogged in a cloud of superlatives and oratory. Mediocre speeches, inane songs* and wretched poetry shadowed him. But the fact remains that the newspapers have made an entire country as small and closely knit as a village. Usually it is the village bad boys and girls--erring corset salesmen, twisted sex victims, brawling cinema actors and actresses--who make the rest of the villagers sit up, rub eyes. But whether it is a good show or a bad show or a peep show, the newspapers have certainly brought the art of ballyhoo to new heights of volume and penetration. Through it all, the hero of the occasion has been, appropriately, the most heroic aspect of it. Never has his tongue or his balance slipped, always has he been what kindly old ladies might call "a real nice boy." Anyone might have said, as Colonel Lindbergh said at the performance of Rio Rita: "I won't keep you long; you'd rather see the show than listen to me." But few would have fulfilled that promise and sat down after a speech of hardly more than a moment's duration. And Colonel Lindbergh's con duct in Paris and in England must have done much to relieve the sore ness caused by tourists with franc-plastered trunks, by Mr. Tilden squabbling with linesmen and Mr. Hagen missing his appointments. With the Lindbergh episode al most over, cynics may rise to call his ovations "hysteria," his re ceptions "sensationalism run riot." But back of the torn paper and the screeching headlines lay a very sincere and very spontaneous out burst of popular emotion. There has been so much commercialism in everything of late -- crimes of passion are accompanied by insurance policies and lithe-limbed athletes hold grandstand conferences. Here was one man who did some thing for motives other than there being "money in it," for it is hard ly sentimentalism to feel that Colonel Lindbergh did not cross the Atlantic with his mind focused on Mr. Orteig's $25,000. It was one instance in which the Dollar was not quite Almighty, of the Golden Age v. the Age of Gold.

*Quotation from one "Lindbergh song": And as you winged your astral way God smiled--you were so near-- He could not fail such perfect faith, Fly on and have no fear. Oh, glorious France, Oh, noble France, How gallant are your ways, You sheathe fresh sorrows with a smile. To glorify his days!